Russia is increasing its call on western technology. Among the latest action in a program to update Russian refineries:
- Texaco Inc. awarded three licenses for use of its technologies at refineries in Perm and Novokuibyshevk.
- Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez, a Russian joint stock company, chose ABB Lummus Crest, Bloomfield, N.J., to carry out a three phase master plan to modernize the 275,000 b/d Perm refinery.
Texaco's agreements involve the first time its technologies have been licensed in Russia.
The Novokuibyshevk refinery, in the Samara region of Russia, is undergoing a modernization and expansion program of its lubricant base oil manufacturing unit. The Texaco license is for an 11,000 b/d MP refining unit designed to enhance the refinery's efficiency in producing high quality base oils.
Texaco's other major refinery modernization license agreements are with Lukoil at its Permnefteorgsintez refinery, about 700 miles east of Moscow. They involve licensing of a 67,000 b/d T-StarSM vacuum gas oil hydrodesulfurizer and a grassroots fluid catalytic cracking unit.
Texaco said its FCC process significantly increases a refinery's capability to convert heavy hydrocarbons into gasoline and other lighter products. The T-StarSM pretreater further improves the FCC yields of clean light end products and reduces sulfur in products emissions.
Texaco also is involved in three upstream projects in Russia. They include a well workover project begun last year in Sutormin oil field, currently producing 16,000 b/d, negotiations for exploration and production acreage in the Sakhalin Islands, and the Timan Pechora project, a long term oil development program north of the Arctic Circle (OGJ, Apr. 18, p. 31).
Lummus Crest is to provide the Perm refinery certain licensed technology, plan project execution, perform basic design and engineering, and arrange offshore procurement and project services.
Existing process units are to be revamped and 15 new units added. Distillation units revamped and added during Phase I of the plan are to begin operating in 1996.
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