Saudi Aramco Preparing For Riyadh Refinery Clean Fuels Upgrade
The Saudi state firm is looking to award a contract to upgrade the Riyadh refinery. This is part of a company-wide clean fuels program to meet tighter transport fuel specifications due to take effect next year.
Saudi Aramco has invited contractors to bid for the Clean Transportation Fuels Project at the Riyadh refinery. Bids for the project, for which the cost has been reported at $300mn, are required by the end of October. While the state firm has not announced a timetable for the upgrade work, MEES understands that it has already begun scheduling plant shutdowns so that it can proceed in late 2012 and in 2013.
The front end engineering design (FEED) for the Riyadh refinery clean fuels project has been carried out by a consortium led by Foster Wheeler. The Foster Wheeler SOFCON consortium was awarded a contract for the FEED and project management services in July 2011. It comprises a subsidiary of Foster Wheeler�s Engineering and Construction Group and A Al-Saihati, A Fattani & O Al-Othman Consulting Engineering Company (SOFCON).
Project Scope
Foster Wheeler announced at the time of the contract award: �The objective of this project is to reduce the sulfur content of gasoline and diesel produced by the refinery to 10 parts per million (ppm), and to reduce the level of benzene in gasoline. The company�s FEED scope includes new isomerization, naphtha splitting and sulfur guard-bed units as well as the addition of new equipment, including a diesel hydrotreater reactor, in existing units.� The company said that the FEED also includes the debottlenecking of the hydrocracker and gas concentration units, and replacement of crude and vacuum distillation tower internals. Other new facilities include two new tanks, a new pipe rack, instrument air compressor, condensate system, substation, process interface building and workshop. Main control and monitoring systems will also be upgraded, as will the laboratory facilities.
The Riyadh refinery has a crude distillation capacity of 120,000 b/d. Crude oil feedstock is delivered to the plant via the East-West pipeline. The existing units at the refinery include: a 40,000 b/d capacity vacuum column for processing the heavier crude fractions; a 30,000 b/d hydrocracker to upgrade the heavy fractions; a 30,000 b/d catalytic reformer to upgrade naphtha to produce gasoline blending components; a 26,000 b/d platformer to boost the gasoline octane rating; a delayed coker to crack residual oil into gasoil and petroleum coke; and two 70 tons/day sulfur recovery units.
SASREF/SAMREF Upgrades
Saudi Aramco is upgrading other refineries to produce cleaner transport fuels. Saudi Aramco and Shell last year completed a clean fuels project at their 305,000 b/d capacity Saudi Aramco Shell Refinery Company (SASREF) joint venture plant at Jubail. This has enabled the production of 100,000 b/d of 10ppm sulfur diesel fuel at the plant. Also, the Saudi Aramco Mobil Refinery (SAMREF) in Yanbu', a joint venture of Saudi �Aramco and ExxonMobil, awarded a contract to WorleyParsons in 2009 to upgrade the plant to comply with tighter fuel specifications. By 2013 Saudi Arabia will require gasoline to be produced with a maximum 10ppm of sulfur and diesel with 50ppm. The diesel sulfur content limit will be reduced to 10ppm by 2016.
The SAMREF upgrade is being carried out in two separate phases: Phase 1 is scheduled to start up in 1Q13 after a refinery turnaround; and Phase 2 will start up by the end of 2015. Phase 1 involves the installation of a grassroots desulfurization train to treat 60,000 b/d of fluid catalytic cracking unit gasoline and revamping the 98,000 b/d distillate hydrotreater and refinery utilities. Phase 2 is expected to include a new high pressure distillate hydrotreater, hydrogen manufacturing, sulfur recovery, and off-sites and utilities infrastructure.
In related news, Saudi Aramco and Total have reportedly begun testing the boilers at their new Saudi Aramco Total Refinery and Petrochemicals (SATORP) joint venture plant in Jubail. The $14bn plant is scheduled to begin production in 3Q13. It is based around two 200,000 b/d capacity crude distillation units.
Copyright MEES 2012.
