Egypt’s Midor completes expansion, modernization of Alexandria refinery

State-owned Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. subsidiary Middle East Oil Refinery Co. (Midor) has concluded construction on a long-planned project to expand crude oil processing capacity and improve the quality of production at its previous 100,000-b/sd refinery in El Amreya Free Zone, near Alexandria, Egypt (OGJ Online, Apr. 6, 2020).

As of late-June 2024, Technip Energies NV—Midor’s main engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor—reached mechanical completion on the refinery’s modernization and expansion project, increasing the complex’s processing capacity to 160,000 b/sd and upgrading its production slate to cleaner Euro 5-quality specifications, the service provider said in a post to its official social media account.

With construction activities wrapped, the refinery has already scaled up to processing 95% of its new capacity and achieved commercial production, Technip Energies said.

As main EPC contractor on the project, Technip Energies’ scope of work involved a mix of debottlenecking existing units and delivering new units, including a crude distillation unit, vacuum distillation unit, and a hydrogen production plant based on proprietary steam reforming technology, as well as various process units, interconnecting off-sites, and utilities.

First announced in 2018 by Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources as part of an integrated plan to develop, upgrade, and increase efficiency and production quality of Egypt’s refineries via implementation of a series of new projects across manufacturing sites to help meet domestic petroleum product demand and reduce imports from abroad, the Midor expansion and modernization project originally was planned at an initial investment of $2.2 billion and targeted for completion in early 2022 (OGJ Online, Mar. 5, 2019; Oct. 31, 2018).

Intended to boost the refinery’s overall production to 7.7 million tonnes/year (tpy)—including high-octane gasoline by 600,000 tpy, Euro 5 diesel by 1.3 million tpy, LPG by 145,000 tpy, coke by 226,000 tpy, and sulfur by 65,000 tpy—Midor completed the refinery expansion and modernization project at a final investment of $2.7 billion, according to the operator’s website.