Kuwait lets contract for Al-Zour refinery pipeline system

State-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC) subsidiary Kuwait Oil Co. (KOC) has let a contract to Saipem SPA to build a system of onshore feed pipelines to connect KOC’s domestic petroleum production to fellow KPC subsidiary Kuwait National Petroleum Co.'s (KNPC) grassroots 615,000-b/d Al-Zour refinery complex now under construction in southern Kuwait (OGJ Online, Aug. 5, 2016).

Saipem will deliver engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning of a 450-km onshore pipeline system that will transport crude oil and gas from various KOC South Tank Farm manifolds to the new Al-Zour refinery, the service provider said.

Saipem’s scope of work under the $850-million EPCC contract also will include development of a transportation network designed to move refined products to existing storage areas of KNPC’s Mina Al Ahmadi refinery, which lies about 28 miles south of Kuwait City on the Persian Gulf.

A duration of the contract was not disclosed.

Part of KNPC’s Clean Fuels Project to upgrade, expand, and transform the 270,000-b/d Mina Abdullah and 466,000-b/d Mina Al Ahmadi refineries into an integrated 800,000 b/d merchant refining complex and permanently shut down the 200,000-b/d Shuaiba refinery, the long-planned Al-Zour refinery is scheduled to be commissioned sometime in 2018-19 (OGJ Online, Oct. 27, 2016).

KNPC officially shuttered the Shuaiba refinery on Apr. 1, 2017 (OGJ Online, July 31, 2017).

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].