Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) subsidiary ADNOC Refining (formerly Takreer) has let two contracts to Samsung Engineering Co. Ltd. of South Korea to provide engineering, procurement, and construction services for separate projects on its 80,000-b/d Ruwais refining complex in the UAE.
The combined value of the contracts—both signed on Mar. 26—exceeds $3.5 billion, ADNOC said in a release.
Under the first contract, Samsung Engineering will deliver EPC services for ADNOC’s previously announced $3.1-billion project to increase crude processing flexibility and improve margins at the Ruwais refinery’s 417,000-b/d West plant to enable the site to process up to 420,000 b/d of Upper Zakum crude or similar medium-sour crude types from the market in lieu of fellow UAE-produced, light, sweet Murban crude (OGJ Online, Feb. 8, 2018).
Increased crude-processing flexibility at the refinery, in turn, will free higher-priced Murban crude for export sales to global oil markets to help UAE garner greater returns from its domestically produced oil resources, ADNOC said.
As part of the second contract, Samsung Engineering will provide EPC services for a $473-million waste-heat recovery project (WHRP) at the refinery, which—via an upgrade to four giant gas turbines with closed-cycle power generation technology—will generate an additional 230 Mw of electricity for sale and 62,400 cu m/day of water by capturing refinery waste heat currently vented into the atmosphere.
The WHRP also will play a large role in reducing the environmental impact of the Ruwais complex’s refining and power operations, as well as help improve overall energy efficiency at the site, ADNOC said.
ADNOC earlier announced the award of a contract to a joint venture of CB&I, Houston, and Samsung Engineering for the crude flexibility project (CFP), under which CB&I said it would provide engineering and procurement services for two atmospheric residue desulfurization units equipped with technology licensed by CB&I-Chevron Corp. joint venture Chevron Lummus Global, as well as engineering, procurement, fabrication, and construction of 14 flat-bottom tanks and 10 process heaters for the project (OGJ Online, Feb. 9, 2018).
ADNOC’s multibillion-dollar investment in crude-quality arbitrage and waste-heat recovery at Ruwais follows the operator’s late-2017 announcement that it will boost production capacity of supergiant Upper Zakum offshore field by 350,000 b/d to 1 million b/d and it broader plans to grow its refining capability and expand petrochemical production three-fold to 14.4 million tpy by 2025 (OGJ Online, Nov. 15, 2017).
Other planned projects under the downstream investment program include construction of a new mixed-feed naphtha cracker and investments in new refinery capacity, ADNOC said without disclosing further details.
ADNOC said it expects to complete the CFP by yearend 2022, while the WHRP is scheduled for completion by yearend 2023.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
