Bangladesh Petroleum Corp. (BPC) has let a contract to Engineers India Ltd. (EIL) for work related to a project designed to triple crude oil processing capacity at subsidiary Eastern Refinery Ltd.’s (ERL) 1.5 million-tonne/year refinery at Chittagong, Bangladesh.
As part of the contract, EIL will provide project management consultancy (PMC) for installation of the ERL Unit 2 expansion at Chittagong, which increase crude processing capacity at Bangladesh’s sole refinery by 3 million tpy to 4.5 million tpy, the service company said.
Excluding local taxes, EIL valued the PMC contract at just under $16.6 million.
BPC plans to complete implementation of ERL Unit 2 in phases over the next 3 years at an overall capital investment of $1.7 billion, EIL said.
The ERL Unit 2 project comes as part of BPC’s program to boost the country’s production of petroleum products to help meet domestic demand; reduce the volumes and costs associated with importing fuels from abroad; and increase ERL’s output of fuels that meet more stringent environmental specifications, the state-run oil company said.
In November 2015, BPC signed a memorandum of understanding with Technip SA, Paris, regarding implementation of the ERL Unit 2 project, which alongside increasing fuel production, also would help to reduce the country’s dependency on natural gas, Bangladesh’s Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith said in a Nov. 15, 2015, release from the government of Bangladesh.
Technip, which was responsible for installation of ERL’s first crude unit at Chittagong, also upgraded the refinery in 1991, according to a series of November 2015 releases from France’s embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Chittagong configuration
In addition to its current 1.5 million-tpy crude processing capacity, the Chittagong refinery includes the following major processing units and capacities: vacuum distillation, 200,000 tpy; bitumen blowing, 70,000 tpy; catalytic reforming, 70,000 tpy; visbreaking, 522,000 tpy; LPG Merox, 24,000 tpy; gasoline Merox, 100,000 tpy; kerosine Merox, 125,000 tpy; and hydrogen, 790 tpy.
The refinery also includes a 57,000-tpy mild hydrocracker, which in 2007, was converted to use as a fractionator for natural gas condensate, ERL said.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
