iSPOT® for Tanker Tracking
With Rock Africa’s iSPOT®, we have provided the perfect solution for government clients in the oil and gas industry to deal with the challenges faced. Our iSPOT® for tanker tracking solution aims to uphold safety and security of tankers as well as to overcome the many operational challenges faced in this industry. Read on to find out more about the successful application of Rock Africa’s iSPOT® solutions in the oil and gas industry.
Cross Country Transit Cargo
In the oil producing countries, a large majority of their revenue is generated from the sale of petroleum products. Given that these oil producing countries have to deal with huge amounts of oil and gas related products, petroleum authorities are required to regulate the up and downstream of the oil and gas industry.
These authorities are responsible for the oil assets by ensuring that oil assets are managed properly. They are also responsible for oil prices, making sure that supply remains stable in their home countries. Authorities can fulfil the above responsibilities by subsidising logistics related to bulk oil transportation to petrol stations.
However, the process of bulk oil transportation has posed a few challenges and these petroleum authorities are looking for ways to overcome these challenges.
Challenges:
- Fraudulent transport claims: Tanker drivers take advantage of the lack of information that authorities have on their past travelled routes to make false transport reimbursements.
- Adulterated product compromises consumer safety: Illegal addition of foreign substances into petroleum products are difficult to detect because of the complicated techniques involved.
- Revenue loss from pilferage and theft: Tankers while in transit are susceptible to diversion and import tax evasion.
- Lack of visibility of fleet: Lack of information on the location and conditions of oil and gas in tankers.
- No real time reporting: No indication of any security events or tampering of valves.
Solution:
Rock Africa’s iSPOT® suite involves the use of the Electronic Cargo Tracking System (ECTS) which provides a customised oil and gas workflow that caters for multi drop scenarios. It also includes the use of iSPOT® iSensor that has its own safety features such that it is suitable to be used to lock tanker valves. In order to track the live location of the tankers and to monitor the iSPOT® iSensor in real time, iSPOT® IVM is installed to tankers to fulfil these needs. Furthermore, the command centre is able to monitor the entire tanker fleet and respond to exceptions such as tampering and route deviation.
With Rock Africa’s iSPOT® tanker tracking solution, petroleum authorities can now increase security and accountability in the entire process of the supply chain. More importantly, they can now reduce the cases of false transport claims and at the same time, reduce consumer safety.
Overall, it is evident that Rock Africa’s iSPOT® suite has successfully alleviated the many pain points encountered by the authorities in the oil and gas industry and in turn, allowed them to have ease of mind now that safety and security issues are addressed.
Wet Port to Dry Port
In Indonesia, cargoes are transported from inland manufacturing centers to the bustling Port of Cikarang and vice versa. International shipping lines will connect Cikarang Port with other ports. In the midst of all this, challenges arise and hence, Indonesia customs looked for solutions to address the problems faced.
Challenges:
- Congestion Efficiency Issue: Serious traffic congestion from Tanjung Priok to Cikarang dry port can cause significant delays and incur time and inefficiency costs
- Compliance issue: Authorities had used escorts to monitor each trip from wet to dry ports and this ran the risks of human errors and potential cases of briberies.
Solution:
The iSPOT® suite was used to secure and track shipments from Tanjung Priok port to Cikarang dry port. Ascent provides detailed and useful data such as continuous location of shipments, security, environmental tracking and deviation alerts. Our iSPOT® platform allows customs authorities to ensure that cargoes are bonded. As such, they can carry out Customs Inspection Quarantine (CIQ) at the Cikarang dry port which prevents congestion at Tanjung Priok port.
Outcome:
- Smooth and Efficient Transit: With Rock Africa’s ECTS iSPOT® solution, it leverages on GPS location and automatically communicates identification, location and security status of cargoes to authorities. Shipments free of security issues can experience faster and smoother clearance at customs.
- Compliance: Implementation of Rock Africa’s ECTS allows authorities to gain near real-time visibility, security and integrity of global container shipments, whether by ocean vessel, truck, rail or air which meant that escorts are no longer needed.
Special Economic Zones
Hundreds of trucks of cargo move between the Bang Pa-in and Nava Nakorn Free Zones daily as part of the manufacturing operations of their tenants. All trucks would need to be examined by Customs officers prior to leaving the zone and upon entering another free zone which leads to tremendous amounts of manual record-keeping, import and export declarations.
Challenges:
- Paper-Driven Inefficiency: Manual, paper-based system for inspecting shipments. Due to the manual record-keeping, there were a lot of human errors.
- Time Consuming Administrative Works: Time spent on import and export declarations could have been used for other productive uses.
Solution:
With Rock Africa’s ECTS container security and verification system, it has reduced the number of steps tenants take to record shipments through the two customs checkpoints. Containers tracked by Rock Africa ECTS have access to ‘Green lane’ between the 2 trade zones. Tenants enjoy expedited clearance of the containers as long as they are not flagged by the customs.
Outcome:
- Improved Productivity: Rock Africa has digitalised processes and made it a paperless system which helps to save time, labour costs reduces human errors.
Overall, the implementation of ECTS via Rock Africa’s iSPOT® solutions have proven to increase the ease and decrease the cost of doing businesses.