Egypt’s ANOPC lets contract for proposed hydrocracking complex

Assiut National Oil Processing Co. (ANOPC)—established in 2018 by Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. subsidiary Assiut Oil Refining Co. (ASORC)—has let a contract to TechnipFMC PLC to provide engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) services for new units to be installed at ANOPC’s proposed 2.5-million tonnes/year (tpy) grassroots hydrocracking complex in Assiut, Egypt (OGJ Online, Oct. 8, 2018).

As part of the more than $1-billion contract, TechnipFMC—which currently is working with ANOPC to complete remaining conditions that will allow work to begin on the project—said it will deliver EPC on the following major units for the proposed Assiut hydrocracking complex (AHC):

• Vacuum distillation unit (VDU).
• Diesel hydrocracking unit.
• Delayed coking unit.
• Distillate hydrotreating unit.
• Hydrogen production unit, which will be equipped with TechnipFMC’s proprietary steam-reforming technology.

The service provider’s scope of work under the contract also covers EPC on other unidentified process units, interconnections, off sites, and utilities.

This latest EPC contract for the AHC follows ASORC’s previous award to TechnipFMC for delivery of front-end engineering and design on the project (OGJ Online, Oct. 31, 2018).

In separate release on July 8, however, Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum & Mineral Resources (MOPMR) confirmed signature of contracts for the AHC with TechnipFMC’s operating center in Rome, Italy, as well as with the service provider’s subcontractors Engineering Co. for Petroleum & Chemical Industries (ENPPI) and Petroleum Projects & Technical Consultation Co. (Petrojet).

Following the signing ceremony, which occurred via video conference due to the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) health crisis, Egypt's minister of MOPMR Tariq El -Molla said the AHC—the largest of MOPMR’s refining projects under implementation in Upper Egypt—is one of Egypt’s most important in helping to meet rising domestic demand for petroleum products, as well as in helping to reduce the country’s current reliance on and associated costs for foreign product imports.

Reiterating the importance of the AHC and the major challenge the COVID-19 pandemic now presents to completing the project, El-Molla called for the service providers to speed up coordination of construction and implementation activities among themselves in order to finish the project on schedule.

El-Molla also confirmed the AHC now will require a total investment of $2.8 billion to complete, up from MOPMR’s most recent estimate of $2.5 billion earlier in the year (OGJ Online, Apr. 6, 2020).

As of early 2020, the AHC was scheduled to be completed in 2022.

MOPMR and construction partners have yet to disclose any specific details regarding the degree to which, if any, the COVID-19 pandemic may impact the project timeline.

Contracts background

ENPPI previously confirmed ANOPC awarded a contract for the AHC’s construction to a consortium of ENPPI and partners Petrojet and TechnipFMC (OGJ Online, Feb. 20, 2020). As part of the mid-February 2020 contract, ENPPI said in posts to its official social media accounts that it was to deliver EPC, precommissioning, commissioning, and startup tests for the complex’s VDU, distillate hydrotreating unit, sulfur recovery unit (SRU), and sulfur solidification unit (SSU).

While at the time disclosed no further details regarding its partners’ scope of work under the early 2020 contract, ENPPI did reveal in its 2018 annual report that it was previously awarded a contract by TechnipFMC under which ENPPI was to act as a subcontractor for early works on the AHC. As part of that subcontracting agreement, ENPPI’s scope of work—alongside the VDU, distillate hydrotreating unit, SRU, SSU, as well as on-site and off-site storage areas—was to cover basic engineering, finalization of the licencors’ process design package, procurement services for long-lead items, and open-book cost estimates to define the project’s overall EPC cost.

Project overview, timeline

Once in operation, ANOPC’s AHC will process 2.5 million tpy of heavy fuel oil (mazut) from ASORC’s nearby 4.5-million tpy Assiut refinery—about 400 km south of Cairo—to produce about 2.8 million tpy of Euro 5-quality diesel and other high-value products, according to MOPMR and Petrojet.

Alongside revising AHC’s Euro 5-quality diesel production capacity from an earlier estimate of 2.5 million tpy, El-Molla on July 8 also confirmed the new hydrocracking complex will produce the following:

• 400,000 tpy of naphtha.
• 100,000 tpy of LPG.
• 300,000 tpy of coke.
• 66,000 tpy of sulfur.

In a series of 2019 posts to its official LinkedIn account, ANOPC—which ASORC established specifically to build and operate the AHC—confirmed Petrojet already had undertaken site preparation works in Assiut for construction of the complex.