THE DEVELOPMENT OF OIL BUNKERING FACILITIES

One of the major technical advances of the 20^th Century was the change from coal to oil burning ships. Oil bunkering facilities were installed at Aden in 1920 and a year later on Perim. Aden was never seriously challenged by Perim as an oil bunkering port; this was largely a policy decision by the Persian Gulf Oil Company in about 1923 not to expand facilities at Perim. In addition, with ships and especially passenger liners ever increasing in size, Perim Harbour was no longer able to accommodate the largest ships on the Far East route.

For some years Perim had about 10% of the oil market share in tonnage of oil sold; by the beginning of the 1930s this share would drop to an insignificant figure of around 5%. One can also see from the statistics how Perim was missing out on the new oil-fired large liners of around 25,000 tons that were entering service: ships bunkering at Perim took on an average of not much more than half the quantity of oil that was being taken on at Aden.

Oil storage tanks at Hedjuff c 1947

Oil storage tanks at Maalla c 1925

Table 1 – Oil Bunkering at Aden and Perim 1919-1932

The Running-down of Coaling Facilities at Aden

By 1923 priority in Aden was being given to providing increased oil bunkering facilities. As a result many shipping companies switched their coaling operations to Perim from Aden; consequently in the 7 year period from April 1923 to March 1930 Perim sold on average over 133,000 tons a year, compared to about 45,000 tons a year for the period 1900 to 1914. In several years more coal was being sold at Perim than at Aden. These bare statistics conceal the fact that the number of ships coaling at Perim from 1923 showed no increase in the numbers being coaled pre-war. What was different was that Perim was no longer being used purely to top-up bunkers or perhaps to take on only sufficient coal to reach Suez. Perim was selling about 300 tons per ship and, in one year 1926-27, over 400 tons. One can suppose that it was not just at Aden that coaling facilities were now in short supply.

One can see the effect of the recession in the dramatic decrease in coal sales at both Aden and Perim for the year 1930-31, with a drop in sales of about 63% in each port compared to the previous year. Oil burning ships were less affected, presumably because ship-owners chose to scrap or lay up the older and less economic coal-burning ships in their fleets. Comparing the tonnages of coal taken on per vessel, it would soon be apparent that the majority of the coal-burning ships still in use after 1930 were coastal and tramp steamers.

Table 2 – Coal sales at Aden and Perim 1919-1932

(Blanks in the Table signify that no details are currently available)

Oil berth at Steamer Point c 1930

Why were the years 1921-22 and 1922-23 so poor and 1926-27 so good, in each case for both Aden and Perim? The second may be the easier to answer. One suspects that the above average quantity of coal sold in 1926-27 may have been due to all the goods being brought to England from the Empire for the Wembley Exhibition. The two poor years are harder to explain; at first glance one cannot put it down to the after-effect of WW1, as sales in the two previous years were quite satisfactory. But industries in the UK that had changed to the production of war materials would have needed time to convert back; at the end of the war many ships would have needed to be re-positioned back to their peacetime routes and home ports – and there would have been many troops to have been sent home.