JEDDAH -- Planned refinery expansions and greenfield projects across MENA, led by 830k b/d of new capacity from the GCC by 2020, could make the region an international products hub, with national oil companies (NOC) trading arms playing a key role, Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (Apicorp) said in its inaugural issue released this month.
The report forecast that the GCC will add 830k b/d of refining capacity in 2016-20.
However, with the global capacity also rising, the "competition is tough", and combined with tighter financing, governments must ensure expansion plans add value, not just capacity, the report noted.
The rapid increase in domestic oil demand driven by factors such as high population growth rates, rising income levels and low energy prices has prompted many governments in the MENA region to build new refineries and expand the capacity of existing ones. From around 2.3m barrels per day (b/d) in 1980,
MENA oil consumption exceeded 8.7m b/d in 2014, accounting for around 11% of the world's total. Building new refineries is also part of a wider initiative to integrate the crude, refining and petrochemical industries to create more value added by diversifying exports away from crude oil toward refined products and petrochemicals. As well as increasing the availability of feedstock, the use of refined products provides opportunities to produce more sophisticated petrochemical products that are essential to extend the value chain, Apicorp said in the report.
Some of these projects have already come on line with most of the increase concentrated in the GCC. The completion in the past three years of Yasref and Satorp, two Saudi refineries, and the Ruwais facility in the UAE added approximately 1.2m b/d of new refining capacity. The impact on the products trade balance has been substantial.
For instance, in Saudi Arabia, gross exports of gasoline increased from 44,000 (k) b/d in 2012 to 173k b/d in June 2015, while that of diesel more than tripled from 98k b/d to 308k b/d during the same period.
As a result, during the first half of 2015, Saudi net imports of gasoline stood at around 86k b/d and even though the kingdom was a net importer of diesel only a few years ago, net exports have reached 108k b/d (in May, net exports reached a peak of 300k b/d, but declined in June as demand for diesel in power generation increased).
The Ruwais refinery in the UAE had some start-up problems and hence the impact on trade balances is yet to be fully felt.
But while some countries in the GCC succeeded in increasing refining capacity, conflict has destroyed capacity in many Arab countries, resulting in shortage of petroleum products which has, in turn, forced governments increasingly to rely on expensive imports. Libya, Yemen, Syria and Iraq have seen significant cuts in refining capacity. The 300k b/d Baiji refinery in Iraq is essentially out of operation, a loss that has prompted Baghdad to accelerate plans to build new refineries in other parts of the country. This has not yet been successful: on top of financing issues, the absence of clear regulatory structure has kept foreign investors at bay.
In Libya, the 220k b/d Ras Lanuf refinery, the country's largest, remains closed, while the regular shut down of oilfields and labor strikes continue to disrupt operations at the 120k b/d Zawiya plant.
In Yemen, the 150k b/d Aden refinery has operated intermittently during the conflict.
In Syria, Damascus has lost control of all its major oilfields, leaving the Banias and Homs refineries operating at a fraction of their full capacity.
Moreover, even those countries not directly affected by political turmoil have seen refining plans delayed or canceled.
Morocco's sole refinery, SAMIR, had its assets suspended by the authorities pending financial restructuring, while in Tunisia plans for the building of the Skhira refinery have been put on hold due to financing problems and the inability to secure crude from neighboring Algeria and Libya.
In Algeria, plans to build five new refineries to meet domestic demand have faced repeated delays and the current squeeze in revenues will likely put these plans on hold.
In Jordan, the Jordan Petroleum Refinery Company (JPRC) plans to expand capacity from 70k b/d to around 150k b/d, but this will depend both on securing finance for the project and the completion of oil pipelines from Iraq.
In Egypt, agreements have been made to upgrade and modernize two refineries, Assiut and Midor, as well as the Mostorod refinery expansion, although it is not clear if these projects will be carried out on time, the report further said.
The GCC was not left scot-free.
The oil-price collapse since mid-2014 has curbed investment over the medium term with some projects being pushed back and others canceled, although a handful of projects might come on line within or shortly after their targeted completion date.
Jazan project in Saudi Arabia and the UAE's Fujairah plant are the major additions, Apicorp report said. These will add 400k b/d and 200k b/d of capacity, respectively, between 2016 and 2020. The Jazan refinery has been pushed back into 2018 while the Fujairah refinery, with a target completion date of 2016, is now expected to come online at around the same time. The rest of the additions will come from the Ras Laffan 2 plant in Qatar, which will add 146k b/d of condensate capacity, followed by the Sohar expansion in Oman, which will add 82k b/d to its existing capacity of 116k b/d.
The 230k b/d grassroots Duqm Refinery (a joint venture between Oman Oil Company and Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Company) is also likely to come on line in the early 2020s.
The report also noted that establishing a key position in the products markets can provide MENA producers with a strategic opportunity to develop the trading industry and establish regional trading hubs. So far, NOCs in the region have almost exclusively relied on their trading arms or subsidiaries to buy and sell their refined products, bypassing the traditional oil traders such as Glencore and Vitol.
In 2012, Saudi Aramco established the Aramco Trading Company (ATC) in place of its Product Sales and Marketing Department to handle the sales and purchasing of all petroleum products. Since its establishment, ATC has been an active player in the products market competing with the established oil-trading houses. Other examples include Oman Trading International (OTI), a venture between the state of Oman and Vitol.
In Oman, plans are underway to build a large crude and petroleum product storage facility with a capacity of 200m barrels. The UAE has increased tank-storage capacity in Fujairah from 2.8m cubic meters to 7.4m cubic meters over the past 10 years with the total storage capacity expected to increase to about 9m cubic meter s by the end of 2015.
While the region is likely to continue to be a net importer of gasoline (or in the case of the GCC a modest exporter of gasoline with export expected to reach 100k b/d by 2020), diesel exports from the GCC are expected to rise sharply from 310k b/d in 2015 up to 895k b/d in 2020.
The new refineries in the Middle East (as elsewhere) have been configured mainly to produce diesel to cater for the anticipated increase of diesel demand from Asia, particularly from China.
Hence, faced with increased competition in global products markets, subsidized prices in local markets, and overcapacity in global refining, Apicorp report suggests that it is " a good time for governments to re-evaluate their downstream strategies" as some refining projects "struggle to find adequate financing in a large number of countries, including Kuwait, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, and Algeria."
It noted "many governments will be forced to seek private sources of finance to fund many of the planned projects, (and) they have to show that these projects are adding real value and are not solely driven by the increasing pressure to meet ever-increasing demand."
© The Saudi Gazette 2015
