10/30/2008 14h23
Santos will deepen harbor depth to 15 meters
Valor Econômico - 10/30/2008
The deepening of the waters of the port of Santos, to moor ships of greater draft, will be the main challenge of the "masterplan", a partnership between Codesp and the Inter-American Bank of Development (IBD). With the objective of evaluating the potential and the perspectives of expansion of the terminal for the next decades, the project starts to be implanted by the consortium formed by Louis Berger Group (USA) and Internave Engenharia (SP). The conclusion term of the works is 10 months, at a cost of US$ 1.3 million, with 77% for the IBD and 23% for the Special Secretariat of Ports (SEP). According to the Minister of Ports, Pedro Brito, who signed the agreement with the IBD for Brazil, "the expansion of the port of Santos can only be considered with the guarantee of the project of deepening the shipping canal. We have the expectation of make the public bid for the dredging still this semester". The dredging objective is to increase the navigation chute of the port, currently 12 meters, to up to 15 meters. In a meeting held yesterday at Codesp, the first one of the work group of the Plan of Development and Expansion of the Port of Santos, priorities for its execution were defined. Santos should have activities of about 81 million tons this year, having as its limit 115 million tons with the existing facilities. According to the SEP, the projections of demand in the mid and long terms will take into account the identification of possible physical, operational and technical difficulties, such as the inclusion of subsystems that integrate the port. José Roberto Serra, president of Codesp, defends the inclusion, in Santos' port installations, of the riverside areas around it, with the use of the river courses and even in other external ones, which are connected by ducts to the terminal. The group is also going to forecast alternative plans of expansion, schedules of implantation, pre-environmental, social, economic and financial feasibility studies, with estimation of costs and their benefits.
