Tupras lets contract for Izmir and Batman refineries

Turkish Petroleum Refineries Corp. (Tupras) has let a 5-year service, maintenance, and support contract to a division of Honeywell to upgrade controls at two of its refineries in Turkey.

At Tupras’ 11-million tonne/year Aliaga refinery at Izmir and its 1.1-million tpy refinery at Batman, Honeywell Process Solutions will upgrade existing systems and provide maintenance, support, and parts management for the Honeywell equipment at the plants, Honeywell said.

Honeywell’s scope of work will include providing around-the-clock support as well as a resident engineer to provide quicker response times, which will add to overall savings on maintenance and improve overall performance at the refineries, the service provider said.

Honeywell did not disclose a value of the contract, which runs through 2018.

“Honeywell was the only automation vendor to provide a lifecycle management contract that goes beyond simple maintenance activities,” said Osman Demir, coordinator for contracts and procurement at Tupras.

“The contract lets us meet one of our major challenges in constructing an efficient long-term plan for migrations while also giving us certainty for our financial plan,” Demir added.

In 2013, Honeywell updated one of the largest control systems at the Izmir refinery by migrating it to the company’s proprietary Experion control system, Honeywell said.

This most recent contract comes as part of a host of modernization and upgrading projects Tupras recently has taken to improve operations at its Turkish refining operations, which include the Izmit and Izmir refineries, each with a crude processing capacity of 11 million tpy, as well as the 5-million tpy Kirikkale refinery and the Batman refinery (OGJ Online, Sept. 30, 2014).

During 2013, Tupras invested $1.2 billion in 83 small and medium-scale projects aimed at increasing productivity, efficiency, safety, and profitability at the refineries, with total capital investments in refinery improvement activities in 2006-15 projected to amount to nearly $5.5 billion.