TEHRAN - A project for dredging the internal and external canals of Bushehr port was inaugurated on Wednesday in a ceremony on the occasion of Government Week (August 23-29) to provide traffic and mooring for 30,000-ton vessels in this port.

According to the Head of Iran Port and Maritime Organization (PMO) Mohammad Rastad who attended the inauguration ceremony, with a total cost of 1.9 trillion rials (about $45.23 million) the project is going to be completed over a 20-month period, IRNA reported.

The total volume of dredging that is going to be done in this project is estimated at 5.75 million cubic meters, Rastad said.

The official noted that currently with 387,336 cubic meters of dredging operations carried out, the length of the port’s rotation pond has reached 666 meters and the average width is 330 meters.

The external canal of Bushehr port is currently 10,030 meters long and 150 meters wide in which 5.42 million cubic meters of dredging will be carried out and the final level of the canal will reach -10.8 meters.

He also referred to the inauguration of a project for the reorganization of offshore facilities at Bushehr port’s Valfajr Terminal and said: "This project has been implemented with a credit of 450 billion Rials (about $10.7 million) in 15 months."

Construction of new dolphins for mooring of passenger ferries, repairing and reconstruction of the existing ro-ro wharf, organization of a sea passenger terminal, construction of a floating wharf for Kharg Island passenger vessels were mentioned by the official as the goals of this project.

EF/MA