At present, the port’s traffic stands at 55 million tonne, and port officials believe it is likely to touch an all time high of 62 million tonne at the close of the financial year.

But this time, a major contributor to this position would be Kandla’s satellite oil port, known as the Off-Shore Oil Terminal at Vadinar in Jamnagar district.

“The main port of Kandla and our extended arm Vadinar handle equal volume of traffic. But for the time being, there is the possibility of Vadinar handling more volume than Kandla. Earlier, Kandla handled the lion's share of total traffic volume at the two ports,” said Dr G S Rao, who now heads the Kandla Port Trust as its in-charge

chairman. According to port officials, the rise in traffic at the port is primarily due to Essar Oil’s Vadinar-based 10.5-million-tonne capacity refinery, which has now reached full capacity.

“They have one functioning product jetty and the second one is under construction. They have also sought our permission to construct three more product jetties and the second SBM (single buoy mooring – a kind of small round shaped floating platform used for tying very large crude carriers to unload the imported crude oil). Their request would be put up before the board of the trustees of KPT for a formal approval,” said Rao.

He further said that there are also plans to deepen the 27 km long Sogal channel up 13.5 metres to allow bigger draft vessels to berth at the port.