Hambantota turns to layup business

The expensive Chinese controlled greenfields port of Hambantota is now touting its availability as a warm lay-up hub.

Hambantota International Port Group (HIPG) is a joint venture of China Merchants Port Holdings and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), in which the Chinese state-controlled company holds an 85% share under a 99-year lease, with an investment reported at $974m.

The Hambantota International Port, which it operates on Sri Lanka's southern coast has been advertised as a key link in China's massive Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of global transportation infrastructure investment projects.

But it has attracted headlines in Sri Lanka and abroad both for its politically fraught financing and for the lack of customers since its completion in December 2017.

It boasts 10 brand-new berths for ro-ro, bulk, container vessels and tankers, but vessel-tracking websites currently show only one trading ship in the area.

Now, however, HIPG has announced that the berthing of the first laid-up ship to sign in for warm lay-up at the underutilised sheltered port.

First customer for Hambantota's new sideline is the 1,500-metre dynamically-positioned drillship Aban Abraham (built 1976), controlled by India's Aban Offshore.

"The market is well aware of more established ports and the fact that the Hambantota International Port was chosen despite this clearly proves that we are benchmarking international standards," said HIPG chief operating officer Tissa Wickramasinghe in the company statement.

According to the HIPG announcement, the idle deepwater drillship will be overseen using a skeleton crew under Sri Lankan flag warm layup requirements for a contracted term of six months under the supervision of Colombo-based logistics and port agency company Maritime Agencies Pvt Ltd, a subsidiary of Hayleys Advantis.

TradeWinds' sister publication Upstream had reported the vessel as under charter to Indian state-controlled Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) for a period of two years through October of this year at a rate of $105,582 per day.