Calcutta Port Trust News

India's Essar Ports has won a contract to build the first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in West Bengal  under the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) at an investment of Rs 450 crore (USD 70 million). A Press Trust of India report said that the LNG project is expected to be commissioned in two years. The facility will come up at the Haldia port with a capacity to store one million tonne of the clean fuel. Haldia Dock Complex under Kolkata Port Trust had earlier this year invited bids for setting up an LNG terminal with storage and distribution facilities. Essar Ports, in consortium with Ultra LNG and Essar Shipping, had participated in the tender and emerged as the highest bidder for the project, beating state-owned Petronet and private operator V Energy.

A Panamanian ship docked safely at Calcutta on Friday, a day after it was hijacked near the port by an armed group, officials said. The ship, named Jubilee, with 23 people aboard, was carrying 4,482 tons of logs from Rangoon to Calcutta when a group of more than 200 people in boats forced it to stop 70 km (44 miles) short of Calcutta port on Thursday afternoon. "They were local miscreants who wanted the ship to unload its cargo on the riverside so that local people got employment," Calcutta Port Trust spokesman B.K. Sahu said. The deputy marine director of the Calcutta Port Trust, T.K. Das Chaudhury, said "more than 200 people boarded the ship and took away the captain yesterday (Thursday)".

India's coastguard rescued 30 crewmen who abandoned a Vietnamese cargo ship carrying 13,200 tons of potash fertilizer on Tuesday after it began sinking off the east coast of India, a port official said. "The 30 crew members of the MV Lucnam have been rescued by the Indian Coast Guard and vessels from the Calcutta Port Trust," a port spokesman said The ship, owned by the state-run Vietnam Ocean Shipping Co, was sinking at Sandheads at the mouth of Bay of Bengal, approximately 145 miles south of the eastern city of Calcutta.