The basins, the berths, and the environmental programs this project would build on.
Sohar Industrial Port Company SAOC (SIPC) operates Sohar Port and Freezone, one of the busiest industrial ports on Oman's Batinah coast. The port is organized into an Inner Port Basin — sheltered behind Breakwater 1 and home to most general berths as well as the L&T berths behind a second breakwater — and an Outer Port Basin serving additional numbered berths, plus the VALE jetties, which sit outside the main basin entirely. Vessels move through these berths constantly, and most run their auxiliary engines the entire time they're alongside (Sohar Industrial Port Company, 2025).
Shore power (cold ironing) requires both sides to be retrofitted: the vessel needs onboard shore-power connection equipment, and the port needs high-voltage electrical infrastructure run out to every berth. Most vessels calling at Sohar today aren't equipped for it, and retrofitting a global fleet isn't something a port authority controls. Shore power therefore only works for the subset of ships already fitted for it, at berths already wired for it — everyone else keeps running auxiliary engines at berth regardless.
The barges are meant to cover exactly that gap: any vessel, any berth, no retrofit required (STAX Engineering, 2025a). This is not a hypothetical advantage — in California, tankers were unable to use shore power for safety reasons, and emissions-capture barges became the approved compliance route for exactly that reason (The Maritime Executive, 2025). The two technologies aren't substitutes: shore power reduces emissions from ships that can use it, and barges reduce emissions from ships that can't.