Norfolk cargo facility a link in global shipping chain

NORFOLK

A few hundred yards from West Ghent watering holes, a vignette of the global marketplace is playing out at Lambert's Point Docks.

On Monday, a crane began loading six massive generators from rail cars onto the BBC Everest, a German-flagged cargo ship that arrived Sunday night in Norfolk from Baltimore.

They're the first of 17 of the machines - 12 gas-turbine generators and five steam-turbine generators - to be manufactured at a Siemens AG facility in Charlotte, N.C., and railed to the shipyard by Norfolk Southern Corp.

They're bound for Saudi Arabia, where they'll become part of an electrical plant run in conjunction with a water-desalination facility.

Gas turbines will burn natural gas or fuel to generate electrical power. The heat and exhaust will be captured and directed to steam turbines, creating additional electricity, said Katie Walton, a Siemens spokeswoman.

They're all part of a $1 billion contract that Munich-based Siemens won from a consortium that includes companies from Saudi Arabia and China.

The desalination plant is expected to begin supplying the capital city of Riyadh with 1 billion liters of potable water a day by 2014, according to Sugar Land, Texas-based Industrial Info Resources, a web-based provider of industrial news.

The six generators are among eight that began arriving at Lambert's Point Docks in October, with the last delivery in late December, said Corine Barbour, general superintendent.

The final shipment from Charlotte probably will arrive late this summer, she said.

Norfolk Southern owns the rail-dock operation, which can store up to 800 rail cars and has shipped locomotives, transformers and other heavy equipment all over the world, including South America, Australia, the United Kingdom and Africa.

"Virtually anything you can put on the rail, we can handle here at this facility," Barbour said.

The loading of the generators is expected to wrap up today.

The BBC Everest is scheduled to depart Wednesday night.

Robert McCabe, 757-46-2327, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com