Work proceeds on Egypt’s Midor refinery expansion
TechnipFMC PLC has completed remaining conditions required to enable work to begin on an earlier awarded contract let by the Egyptian government for delivery of engineering, procurement, and construction services related to the modernization and expansion of state-owned Middle East Oil Refinery Co.’s (Midor) 115,000-b/d refinery in El Amreya Free Zone, near Alexandria, Egypt (OGJ Online, June 8, 2018).
Valued at more than $1 billion, the EPC contract will be included in TechnipFMC’s first-quarter inbound orders in the onshore-offshore segment, the service provider said.
As part of its scope of the work, TechnipFMC will provide EPC services for the expansion, including debottlenecking of existing units and delivery of new units including a crude distillation unit, vacuum distillation unit, hydrogen production plant based on proprietary steam reforming technology, as well as various process units, interconnecting, off sites, and utilities (OGJ Online, Oct. 31, 2018).
Starting in 2022, the modernized complex will exclusively produce Euro 5 products, with a 60% increase in the refinery’s original capacity to 160,000 b/d of crude oil.
Upon announcing the original project in 2018, Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources (MPMR) said the Midor expansion project—which will cost a total of $2.2 billion—would increase crude processing capacity at the site to 175,000 b/d.
Alongside increasing Midor’s crude processing capacity, the expansion—which comes as part of MPMR’s integrated plan to develop, upgrade, and increase efficiency and production quality of Egypt’s refineries through implementation of a series of new projects across manufacturing sites to help meet petroleum product demand as well as reduce imports from abroad—also will raise the refinery’s current LNG production by about 145,000 tonnes/year, benzene 95 by about 600,000 tpy, and jet fuel by about 1.3 million tpy.
Current capacities
In addition to its 115,000-b/d crude-vacuum distillation unit, the Midor refinery currently features the following major capacities:
• Naphtha hydrotreating, 32,400 b/d.
• Naphtha splitting, 32,400 b/d.
• Catalytic reforming, 21,700 b/d.
• Isomerization, 10,700 b/d.
• Kerosine (Merox), 10,150 b/d.
• Distillate hydrotreating, 28,600 b/d.
• Hydrocracking, 33,500 b/d.
• Hydrogen production, 64,000 cu m/hr.
• Delayed coking, 25,650 b/d.
• Light-ends, LPG recovery, 1,150 tonnes/day.
• Sulfur, tail gas treatment, 290 tonnes/day.
• LPG treatment, 5,766 b/d.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
