The Port of Beaumont recently handled a piece of cargo so big it took two ships working in tandem to unload it.

The cargo was a propylene fractionator - a huge steel pressure vessel 321 feet long weighing 665 tons. It and two other similar pieces of cargo made the trip from Korea to the port of Beaumont on the deck of a Dutch heavy-lift ship. After spending some time at the port, the huge tank will be loaded on board a barge to be shipped to a refinery construction project in Port Arthur.

The Port of Beaumont has been selected by ABB Lummus Global, a construction company based in New Jersey and Houston, to import more than 150 pressure vessels of all sizes and dimensions that will be used in the construction of the world's largest liquids steam cracker. The facility, which represents an investment of about $800 million, is being built by ABB Lummus Global at Fina's Port Arthur refinery and will be operated by BASF Corporation.

The unit will be the largest single-train olefins production facility ever built, with a capacity of 1.7 million metric tons of ethylene and propylene. The cracker is scheduled for start-up at the end of the year 2000. A steam cracker is a petrochemical plant that turns naphtha and light hydrocarbons into ethylene, propylene and other chemical raw materials. These chemicals can be transported via pipeline or other means to chemical and polymer facilities and converted into olefin-based products.

The port began receiving heavy cargo for the cracker construction project in early September. The largest piece was a 960 ton gasoline fractionator 193 feet long, 36 feet wide and 41 feet tall. The largest vessels, such as the gasoline and propylene fractionators, are too big to be transported overland to the job site in south Jefferson County. They will be driven onto a barge and moved by water to their destination.

The propylene fractionator was only one foot shorter than the ship that it was riding on. The m.v. Fairlift, a specialized heavy lift ship operated by Jumbo Shipping Co., arrived in the port from Changwon, Korea, to join her sister ship, the m.v. Fairmast. The two ships were "double-banked" - or moored alongside one-another - to perform the unusual unloading operation.

In a meticulous process, the Fairmast lifted the mammoth pressure vessel slowly while the Fairlift was shifted downstream out of the way. The Fairmast was then moved alongside the port's wharf to slowly lower the huge fractionator onto a 54-axle self propelled modular vehicle furnished by Davenport-Mammoet. After the ship's cranes released the cargo, it was painstakingly moved to a temporary place of rest on one of the port's all-weather open storage areas. The process of slinging, lifting and transporting was repeated the next day for a similar vessel. A third piece, shorter than the two fractionators but weighing 674 tons, was discharged by the Fairlift's own heavy-lift cranes.

The Fairmast is well suited for heavy lift duties; at 361 feet long, she is slightly longer than her sister ship and is equipped with two 500-ton cranes.

Tandem lifts of this nature are unusual in the shipping business, according to a spokesman for Jumbo Shipping, noting the company performs operations like this every few years.

Cargo such as these huge vessels is known in the shipping industry as "project cargo," and requires specialized port facilities, skills and equipment.

The Port of Beaumont has been active in handling project cargo since the mid-1970's, and has a variety of facilities suited to its special needs, including wharves with wide aprons and extremely heavy deck strength, plenty of open area for cargo staging, access to cranes and special handling equipment, good rail and highway access, and skilled longshore labor. The port 's $27 million facilities improvements program will include construction of a 680-foot extension of its primary project wharf, Harbor Island Marine Terminal.

For more information, contact John Roby, e-mail: jrr@portofbmt.com, or Ernest Bezdek, e-mail: elb@portofbmt.com