Saudi Aramco on July 28 signed several contracts with local and international contractors for the detailed engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the Yanbu‘ Export Refinery Project at Yanbu‘ Industrial City.

The newly incorporated Red Sea Refining Co. will be responsible for the execution and operation of the project.

EPC contracts for the major process units were awarded to:

• Tecnicas Reunidas (Spain) — coker package.
• Saudi Services (Saudi Arabia) — high voltage electrical package.
• SK Engineering and Construction Co. (South Korea) — crude package.
• Dayim Punj Lloyd (Saudi Arabia) — offsite pipelines package.
• Daelim (South Korea) — gasoline and hydrocracker packages.
• Rajeh H. Al-Marri (Saudi Arabia) — onsite pipeline relocation package.
• ENPPI (Egypt) — tank farm package.

The Project Management Team said several remaining packages will be awarded over the next few months.

Early this year, the Project Management Team awarded the site preparation contract to Abdulrahman Al-Shalawi Establishment to ensure that the site would be ready for EPC contractors.

“Signing these contracts represents a critical milestone for the Yanbu‘ Export Refinery Project and will pave the way for many other major activities in the Yanbu‘ area,” said Motassim Al-Ma’ashouq, executive director of New Business Development, who attended the signing ceremony together with representatives of the winning contractors.

The project is one of a number of downstream projects that Saudi Aramco is pursuing, and demonstrates the company’s commitment to meeting future worldwide fuel demands. As part of its long-term strategy, Saudi Aramco is now making downstream investments following a massive upstream program that increased the company’s crude oil capacity to 12 million barrels per day.

The project will build a new “grassroots” refinery on a site of about 5.2 million square meters. The new refinery will process 400,000 bpd of Arabian Heavy crude and produce 90,000 bpd of gasoline, 263,000 bpd of ultra-low-sulfur diesel, 6,300 metric tons per day (mtd) of coke and 1,200 mtd of sulfur.

The new refinery will use existing Saudi Aramco facilities to receive crude oil and export the refined products.

It will include refinery process units, utilities and interconnecting piping, associated feedstock and refined product storage, as well as offsite facilities necessary to support the safe and efficient operation of the refinery.
The signing of the EPC contracts is the culmination of a process that started in January 2006, when a team began the base configuration and preliminary engineering, and initiated the selection process for the contractor and process technology licensors.

“We have taken many steps along the way to ensure the Yanbu‘ Project will pioneer many firsts for the Kingdom in the areas of detailed engineering, human resources development, and support of local equipment and material manufacturers,” said Fahad Al-Helal, the designated president and CEO of the Red Sea Refining Co. “Approximately 70 percent of the total project value will be spent within the Kingdom.

“We have mandated that more than one million man-hours in detailed engineering must be executed in the Kingdom,” he said. “That includes the full execution of the detailed engineering of the refinery’s Sulfur Recovery Unit in the Kingdom, which is the first time a major process unit of this size will be fully executed in-Kingdom.

In addition, several in-Kingdom lump-sum turnkey packages will be executed covering cross-country pipelines, communication and electrical work. We will also make maximum use of the Saudi work force during the detailed engineering and construction phases.”

He said the international EPC contractors will hire and train many Saudi engineers in process and mechanical engineering during the detailed engineering phase. “Among our main objectives are the development of young Saudi professionals, helping technology transfer to the Kingdom and maximizing local content in all goods and services used by the project.”
The Yanbu‘ project is expected to create business opportunities for local enterprises and new job opportunities, each of which typically creates five to six indirect job opportunities.

Voir le site de la raffinerie Yasref de Yanbu