Cameroon’s Sonara lets contract for Limbe refinery

Cameroon’s Societe Nationale de Raffinage SA (Sonara) has let a contract to a consortium of French firms Suez SA, Sogea Satom, and Ingenica to provide technology licensing, engineering, and construction for a project to modernize and expand the effluent treatment plant of its 2.1 million-tonne/year refinery in Limbe.

As part of its scope of work under the contract, Suez will equip the plant with its proprietary Poseidon technology for pretreating refinery effluent, the service provider said.

The joint consortium also will build a 18,500-cu m storm basin designed to collect polluted rainwater before treatment to prevent runoff of surface water containing high levels of hydrocarbons.

Scheduled to be completed in September 2018, the modernized effluent plant will be able to treat 9,600 cu m/day of industrial water and rainwater at the site, Suez said.

Suez said its share of the total €22-million contract will amount to about €6 million.

As part of its program to improve fuel production and maximize processing of crude produced in Cameroon, Sonara also is executing an ongoing project to expand capacity of the refinery to 3.5 million tpy, according to the operator’s web site.

Alongside addition of a new vacuum distillation and hydrocracking units, the expansion will include revamps of existing units.

Sonara has yet to release a definitive timeframe for when it will commission the fully expanded refinery.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].