Conrad Prabhu
The consortium of Spanish-based international general contractor Tecnicas Reunidas and South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering and Construction has landed the coveted EPC-1 package of the Duqm Refinery project — a $2.75 billion contract that covers the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of the main Process Units of the estimated $7 billion venture.
Notifications of the client Duqm Refinery & Petrochemical Industries Company’s (DRPIC) intent to award contracts, linked to a trio of packages covering the construction of the refinery at Duqm SEZ, went out over the weekend.
The EPC-2 package — covering the construction of utilities and offsite facilities — was awarded to the joint venture of Petrofac (UK) and Samsung Engineering (S Korea). The third and final package — EPC-3 — was clinched by Italian oil and gas contractor Saipem International. It includes the construction of a storage and export terminal at Duqm Port, as well as the erection of eight storage tanks at Ras Markaz where a giant crude oil storage park is planned, and the laying of an 80 km crude oil pipeline from Duqm SEZ to Ras Markaz.
In value terms, however, the biggest of the three packages is EPC-1, representing the centrepiece of the 230,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity Duqm Refinery project. As part of its remit, the Spanish-South Korean consortium will construct, among other things, a hydrocracker unit (HCU), hydrogen production unit (HPU), diesel hydrotreating unit (DHT), saturated gas plant (SGP), LPG treatment unit (LTU), kerosene treatment unit (KTU), sulphur recovery unit (SRU), and delayed coking unit (DCU).
These units will be designed and built under licence from the respective technology licenses, comprising mainly Chevron Lumus Global (CLG) for the HCU, HPU, DHT and SGP process units; UOP for the kerosene treatment unit (KTU); Fluor USA for the sulphur recovery unit (SRU), and Foster Wheeler Houston for the delayed coking unit (DCU).
According to Tecnicas Reunidas, which is a majority 65 per cent shareholder in the consortium with Daewoo Engineering & Construction, the process units will be designed at its offices in Madrid, Spain.
For its part, the joint venture of Petrofac and Samsung Engineering will undertake the construction of utilities and offsite facilities under the EPC-2 package valued at around $2 billion. It includes utilities such as, among others, electricity, water, gas, steam, air and nitrogen. Also included in its scope is the construction of tanks for handling crude, petroleum products and intermediate, as well as buildings for admin offices, maintenance workshops, labs, control room facilities, and so on.
Storage capacity linked to the refinery project will be developed both at the Crude Oil Storage Park at Ras Markaz and the Liquid Terminal at Port of Duqm, under EPC-3 — an estimated $800 million package that will be handled by Saipem International. Client DRPIC’s tank farm at Ras Markaz is proposed to offer a gross capacity of 5.2 million barrels of crude. Facilities for product storage and loading will also be developed at the liquid berth currently under construction at Duqm port.
© Oman Daily Observer 2017
