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By Tom Westcott.
Khoms, 9 May 2013:
The port at Khoms is looking to double its capacity after acquiring extra berths and thousands . . .[restrict]of hectares of land.
On Monday, the port authorities signed an agreement with the Libyan Navy, which had previously occupied almost half the harbour, to take over four additional berths and some 40,000 hectares of land.
Under the new agreement, the port of Khoms will have control over most of the harbour’s functioning moorings. These include four deep-water berths able to take vessels drawing up to 14 metres, which will offer some of the deepest water berthing in any Libyan port.
“With these new berths we can bring larger container vessels into the port,” the port’s General Manager Mustafa Morshan told the Libya Herald yesterday, “and, once operational, 12 ships could dock at any one time.”
At present, the port can handle a maximum of seven vessels at a time.
Khoms, the fourth largest port in Libya, has serious potential for development with its newly-acquired land. There are early-stage plans to transform the 40,000 hectares into a container terminal, something which Libya does not yet have.
“We are trying to bring international companies here,” Morshan said, “to make a container terminal and hub.”
He added, however, that the land is in bad condition and will require a lot of work. “We don’t yet know if a private company or a government company will do this work,” Morshan said, and there is no timeframe for development yet. [/restrict]
