DAMMAM: GE Oil and Gas and Ali Abdullah Al-Tamimi Co. have formed a joint venture to manufacture air-cooled heat exchangers in Saudi Arabia for use in the Kingdom's oil and gas industry.
Combining Al-Tamimi's local engineering strength with GE's global technology leadership, the joint venture, 25 percent-75 percent Dammam-based partnership, will manufacture and test air-cooled heat exchangers, typically used in oil and gas applications.
The joint venture is dedicated to serving Saudi customers, including Saudi Aramco, with localized equipment manufacturing and testing, as well as rigorous supply-chain logistics and transportation. In addition, the new partnership will also promote Saudi Arabia's growth through technology transfer and the skills development of the local work force.
"This joint venture builds on 50 years of successful partnership between GE Oil and Gas and Al-Tamimi. Our goal is to serve Saudi Arabia's upstream, refinery and petrochemical, and power generation industries with a world-class, localized supply chain underpinned by quality, speed and technical expertise," said Claudi Santiago, president and CEO of GE Oil & Gas.
"The new venture formalizes GE's track record of reliable partnership, consistent delivery and long-term commitment to our business objectives in the Kingdom. In addition, through the transfer of technology and expertise to the local work force, the joint venture will support employment opportunities and the Kingdom's rapidly growing economy."
The new joint venture is the latest successful collaboration between GE and Al-Tamimi, which have established a series of joint ventures beginning in 1957 in areas such as energy and water technology.
The partners are working on a framework for the further localized packaging and assembly of additional advanced GE oil and gas equipment to benefit Saudi Arabian customers such as centrifugal pumps.
More than 17,000 GE Oil and Gas high-efficiency centrifugal pumps are installed around the world for process, refinery, water injection, oil pipeline, boiler feed and water-cooling applications. They have been installed with virtually every type of industrial driver including electric motors, gas and steam turbines and diesel and gas engines; and have reached significant performance milestones such as 14,500 KW/stage and 7,500 rpm.
Al-Tamimi is a diversified engineering and construction firm with 16,000 employees of 28 different nationalities distributed throughout several dozen operating companies serving the energy, chemical, pharmaceutical, hotel, building, supermarket, catering and life support sectors in the Saudi Arabia.
For more than 50 years a large number of centrifugal pumps have been in use at Saudi Arabian refineries and petrochemical plants located in Jubail, Hawiya, Ras Tanura and Dhahran.
By Siraj Wahab
© Arab News 2010
