SINGAPORE (Oct 22): Two tankers carrying oil are unable to offload their cargoes at Port Dickson on Peninsular Malaysia's west coast after a facility that carries crude from the ships to refineries broke down, four sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

A system known as a single point mooring (SPM) unit, a loading buoy anchored offshore that allows tankers to offload their crude via pipeline to the refineries, has been out of service, said the sources.

The SPM connects to a refinery operated by Hengyuan Refining Company Bhd (HRC), a subsidiary of China's Shandong Hengyuan Petrochemical Co, and a second plant owned by the Philippines' largest refiner Petron Corp.

None of the sources were certain what caused the SPM outage.

Hengyuan's refinery has a capacity of 156,000 barrels per day (bpd), while Petron's refinery has a crude distillation capacity of 88,000 bpd, according to their websites.

Hengyuan and Petron did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.

The outage appears to have delayed two ships that were scheduled to unload at the port, shipping data on Refinitiv Eikon showed.

Royal Dutch Shell has chartered the Maran Plato, a Suezmax-sized tanker, to discharge on Oct. 18 and the Torm Valborg, an Aframax-sized vessel, on Oct. 16, the data showed.

But the tankers were still anchored off the port laden with crude as of Tuesday, the data showed.

Shell declined to comment.

When contacted by Reuters, the Port Dickson Marine Department said the companies that have operations in Port Dickson run their own mooring operations and the department was not aware of any delay in shipments as they did not receive any complaints.