Timor-Leste builds award-winning seaport with PMC support from Worley
This past May, the country of Timor-Leste turned 17 after becoming a sovereign and United Nations member state on May 20, 2002. An emerging country, Timor-Leste currently has only one international seaport for dry cargo handling, Dili Port.
With port congestion on the rise at Dili Port, the Government of Timor-Leste and Timor Port S.A., a consortium of the Bolloré Group, came together in 2016 to form an agreement to design, finance, build, operate and maintain a port facility in Tibar Bay.
Bordered by mangroves and sandy silt beaches and bounded by two rocky headlands at the mouth of the bay with hills that roll to the east and west, Tibar Bay is located in Suco Tibar in the sub-district of Bazartete on the north coast of Timor-Leste. To ensure environmental and social impacts in and around Tibar Bay were minimised throughout the duration of the project, Worley was selected to support operational suitability and engineering design by commencing the FEED study consulting services in 2016, which rolled into a PMC contract in 2018.
With the environmental and social consulting team embedded in the engineering team, the port design was reviewed and adjusted throughout the design phase to consider the lowest possible environmental and social impacts, selecting the alignment within the bay which enabled the local community to continue accessing the mangrove habitat, undisturbed. The final design carefully considered the lowest possible dredge impact on corals and fish nursery within the bay.
Developing the first-ever ‘Class A’ Public Private Partnership (PPP) project complete with an Environmental Impact Study (EIS) in Timor-Leste to gain Environmental Licence Approval, the Tibar Bay Port project was recently recognised as the Best Public Private Partnership Project (PPP) for 2018 in the Asia Pacific region by IJ Global.
“This is a history making project for Timor-Leste,” said Worley PMC Project Manager Han Chuan Khor. “Every one of us—Timor Port S.A., Bolloré, Worley, and the contractor China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC)—are proud to be here. We are striving to make this project the role model for the rest of the construction projects in Timor-Leste.”
Scheduled for completion in 2021, the Port of Tibar Bay will have a two-berth quay of 630 metres in length and a 27-hectare container terminal with buildings and utilities. The new port is anticipated to accommodate import and export of up to 350,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) via cargo shipments per year for Phase 1, and more than 1,000,000 TEU after completion of Phase 2.
For more information visit www.worleyparsons.com
28th October 2019
