DMEA: More Clean Fuels progress

This week’s DMEA covers the commissioning of more refining units in Kuwait and contracts for Angola’s new import terminal.

State-owned Kuwait National Petroleum Corp. (KNPC) this week announced that it had launched three more units at its 454,000 barrel per day (bpd) Mina Abdullah refinery as it nears the full launch of its giant Clean Fuels Project (CFP).

The latest additions are a continuous catalytic reforming unit, a vacuum rerun unit and an atmospheric residue desulphurisation (ARDS) unit with a capacity of 50,000 bpd, according to company sources quoted by Argus.

The sources said that the units were brought into operation during the last 14 days. They added that the catalytic reformer will be fed with around 18,000 bpd of naphtha to generate high-octane reformate, hydrogen, light naphtha and LPG; the ARDS will yield around 42,000 bpd of low-sulphur atmospheric residue (LSAR), 2,000 bpd of naphtha and more than 8,000 bpd of diesel; and the vacuum rerun unit will be fed with around 50,000 bpd of LSAR to produce trim gasoil, vacuum gasoil and vacuum residue.

The sources also told Argus that another unit would be commissioned soon.

In early June, KNPC, the downstream-focused subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC), announced the completion of a new hydrocracking unit at the Mina Abdullah refinery, signalling the finalisation of work on the $15.7bn CFP. Completion of the works came a month ahead of its updated schedule.

Angola’s national oil company (NOC) Sonangol reported last week that it had finalised several contracts related to the planned construction of a petroleum product import terminal at Barro do Dande, about 60 km north of the capital Luanda.

In a statement, Sonangol said it had signed three new contracts, including a contract with OECI, the international arm of the Brazilian construction giant OEC (formerly known as Odebrecht Engenharia e Construção), for engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) services. The NOC also signed two contracts with local firms – one with DAR Angola for supervision of the terminal project and another with SOAPRO for an environmental impact assessment (EIA).

As of press time, Sonangol had not revealed the value of the contracts. It did stress, though, that it had chosen the three contractors in public tenders.