Kuwait To Launch New Refinery Before Upgrading Existing Plants

Kuwait plans to launch the long-delayed, new 615,000 b/d refinery at al-Zour six months before it starts to upgrade the 270,000 b/d Mina 'Abd Allah and 466,000 b/d Mina al-Ahmadi refineries in the Clean Fuels Project (CFP), MEES learns. State-owned refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) has asked engineering firms to apply for prequalification for both projects (MEES 30 April), and has also opened the tender for their project management consultancy contracts. The projects – if they go ahead – would lift Kuwait’s refining capacity to 1.415mn b/d from the current 936,000 b/d. It is not clear if contractors that win contracts for al-Zour will be allowed to also bid for the CFP – finding the resources for two simultaneous ‘mega-projects’ could stretch costs, staffing, equipment supply and logistics. Even if different firms do each project the space of six months may not be big enough. A contractor tells MEES “you cannot do both projects at the same time – they have to be one or two years apart.” Furthermore, he thinks political pressure may stop the projects, which were previously costed at $30bn, as it has done before. “There is a fight every day in parliament – there is no political stability,” he says.

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