sshhhhhh!

click to enlarge  —  imarge by jarcob

For some reason it’s been kept somewhat under wraps, but the area of Foster and Welshpool, South Gippsland, seems set to benefit economically from expansion of port facilities at Barry Beach. Some are even tipping boom times for the district.

There’s not much information available, but the following came across my desk today:

TEK-Ocean and Ancon Australia signed a two-year lease for a sector of Esso Australia and BHP Billiton’s Barry Beach Marine terminal in South Gippsland, Victoria, for the provision of logistics and subsea support services.

TEK-Ocean will offer full logistics services such as vessel berthing, fuel, water, storage and bulk handling. The services will be provided out of an interim wharf area that ... will eventually be replaced by a dedicated whart [sic] area ... which is being developed by TEK-Ocean and Ancon.

Gippsland Maritime Logistics, a division of TEK-Ocean, will manage port logistics operations at the leased area. TEK-Ocean said the location of Barry Beach will offer oil and gas operators in the Bass Strait fuel as well as time savings in comparison to using existing ports in Melbourne and Geelong.

It was also reported a couple of years ago that Southern Shipping was looking at moving its operations to Barry Beach, to expand its shipping business between South Gippsland, Flinders Island and Tasmania. I’ve been unable to find any further news on that.

We went for a drive down there last weekend to check things out, but couldn’t get near the site because the Esso/BHP-Billiton facility is subject to restricted access. Consequently we were only able to get a glimpse of the development from a scenic lookout above nearby Toora.

A farming couple with whom we stopped to have a yarn didn’t seem to know very much about it, either. As we were chatting, two sinister-looking black vehicles prowled past in convoy.

“There’s the mafia again,” the lady farmer observed.

The plot thickens.