Russia’s PJSC Gazprom Neft, St. Petersburg, has let a contract to NIPIgazpererabotka (Nipigaz) to serve as general contractor for a Euro+ combined refining unit (CRU) to be built as part of the ongoing modernization and upgrade of its 12.15 million-tonne/year Moscow refinery (OGJ Online, Oct. 30, 2015; Dec. 3, 2014; July 19, 2013; May 7, 2013).
As general contractor, Nipigaz will provide extensive construction and installation works related to commissioning of a Euro+ CRU, Gazprom Neft said.
Initially valued at 21 billion rubles, a final value of the contract will be confirmed following Nipigaz’s presentation of full project documentation, Gazprom Neft said.
With JSC AEM-Technology, the machine-building division of Russian state enterprise Rosatom, already at work on a major plant to be included in the Euro+ CRU, the unit is due to be commissioned in 2018, the company said.
A key project in the second phase of Gazprom Neft’s full modernization of the Moscow refinery, the Euro+ CRU will be used for primary oil refining as well as for production of high-octane Euro-5 fuels and vacuum gas oil.
Following startup of the unit, Gazprom Neft said it will be able to decommission several obsolete installations at the refinery and increase scheduled maintenance events to every 4 years instead of the current 2-year maintenance cycle.
The Russian operator said it expects commissioning of the Euro+ CRU to increase the Moscow refinery’s crude processing capacity 12 million tpy from the 11 million tpy processed at the plant in 2015, according to a Jan. 19 release from the company.
In addition to improving efficiency and reducing environmental impacts at the Moscow operations, the modernization and upgrading project, once fully completed, aims to raise the refinery’s overall design capacity for crude processing to 18.15 million tpy (OGJ Online, Aug. 26, 2014).
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
