Planning and technical feasibility study deepwater port Zona Portuaria Simon Bolivar in Tablazo Bay, Venezuela

Abstract

Venezuela does not have a main port in the region of Lake Maracaibo while the expectations of the government of Venezuela for Lake Maracaibo are high. In the current situation, there are many small ports that are positioned at different locations. The government of Venezuela would like to construct one main port in the region between The Gulf of Venezuela and Lake Maracaibo. The future port has to contribute to the necessary economic growth and at the same time, the environmental conditions of Lake Maracaibo have to be improved. To gain more cargo throughputs and reduce the contamination of salinity in Lake Maracaibo, this deep water port needs to be created and the channel between Lake Maracaibo and the Gulf of Venezuela need to be closed for sea going vessels. By creating a deep water port, cargo such as oil, coal, iron ore, petrochemicals, cement grain, other dry bulk and containers is converged and can be transported in larger consignments. In the thesis, four alternative harbour lay-outs are created and evaluated with a Multi Criteria Evaluation. When the final lay-out was chosen, the data concerning the flow velocities and flow directions were produced in Delft 3D. With these data, the sedimentation rates in two basins have been evaluated.