US grants to support major upgrades at Egyptian refineries

The US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) has awarded grants to Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. subsidiaries Amreya Petroleum Refining Co. (APRC) and Suez Oil Processing Co. (SOPC) to fund feasibility studies for proposed modernization and upgrading at each of the operators’ existing refineries in northern Egypt.

Part of USTDA’s ongoing collaboration with Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum & Mineral Resources (MOPMR) to help realize the joint US-Egyptian priority of transforming the country into a leading energy hub, the grants to SOPC and APRC—worth a combined $1.4 million—will fund studies for projects aimed at increasing efficiency and profitability of the two refineries, as well as works designed to reduce environmental impacts at both sites, USTDA said on Dec. 18.

Valued at just over $694,000, USTDA’s grant to SOPC will cover an already awarded feasibility study to Honeywell International Inc. subsidiary UOP LLC for projects related to modernizing and enhancing capacity of the existing naphtha complex at the operator’s 3-millon tonnes/year (tpy) refinery in Al Zaytiyat, Suez, at the entrance of the Suez Canal on the Red Sea, said Hussein Awad, SOPC’s chairman.

Scheduled to be completed by UOP sometime in 2021, the SOPC study additionally will focus on works to expand and improve the refinery’s gasoline production capacity and quality to meet increasingly more stringent fuel standards, according to USTDA.

Yet to be awarded, the feasibility study for APRC’s planned modernization at its 4-million tpy refinery in Amreya Free Zone, west of Alexandria on the Mediterranean Sea, will evaluate projects designed to improve overall efficiency and profitability of the site by up to 25% while reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by about 20%, USTDA said.

Worth nearly $706,000, USTDA’s grant to APRC will provide necessary project studies on energy management systems, as well as works to improve operational performance and increase levels of automation through the refinery, according to APRC Chairman Ali Fouad Badr.

USTDA and APRC have issued a detailed request for proposals from qualified US firms for the refinery modernization feasibility study, a major goal of which seeks to increase APRC’s current 81,000-b/d production capacity between 10-25%, according to the RFP. Interested US firms must submit their proposals directly to APRC by Mar. 18, 2021 to be eligible for consideration.

The newly awarded USTDA grants for proposed upgrades at the two refineries join a series of ongoing brownfield and grassroot projects by Egypt’s MOPMR to modernize and expand both processing and production capacities of its downstream operators to help meet the country’s ever-increasing domestic demand for finished fuels and chemical products (OGJ Online, July 20, 2020; June 2, 2020; Apr. 6, 2020).

“[These agreements with USTDA] are another step in our continuous path of modernizing Egyptian refineries, opening new horizons towards upgrading and development of projects with the…refineries in line with MOPMR’s vision and will be a building block in our mutual cooperation for the benefit of both countries,” said Tariq El -Molla, minister of MOPMR.

SOPC’s upgrading program

SOPC’s USTDA feasibility study grant follows the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s (EBRD) general procurement notice published on July 7, 2020 for SOPC’s more extensive energy efficiency and upgrade program first announced in 2018 (OGJ Online, May 23, 2018).

As part of the proposed $262-million modernization program—$250 million of which is supported by an EBRD loan—SOPC is undertaking works intended to improve the Suez refinery’s operational performance, utilization rates, and environmental footprint in projects fully consistent with the Green Energy Transition (GET) approach, according to the notice.

Specific major projects to be executed under the refinery modernization program include:

• Refurbishing the existing delayed coking unit.

• Upgrading or installing a new hydrotreating unit.

• Installing a new vapor recovery unit.

• Installing a new asphalt unit at the existing vacuum distillation unit.

• Unidentified energy efficiency investments.

SOPC has yet to disclose a definitive timeframe for the program’s intended completion.