Oman Refinery Mulls $1.2 Billion Expansion for Sohar Refinery Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources India (Delhi, India)--In a bid to augment the country's refining capacity, Oman's major refiner, Oman Refinery and Petrochemicals, has rolled out a massive expansion drive at its Sohar Refinery complex, which is near the capital city of Muscat. The $1.2 billion upgrade and expansion program will increase the production of feedstock and byproducts for the other petrochemical units in the complex.

The project will increase the capacity of the existing refinery from 116,000 to 187,000 barrels per day (BBL/d) through the installation of clean-fuel units, along with the debottlenecking of existing units.

As a part of the uprgrade and expansion program, several major units will be added, including a 70,000-BBL/d crude unit, a 96,000-BBL/d vacuum distillation unit, a 66,000-BBL/d once-through hydrocracker unit, and a 13,000-BBL/d isomerisation unit, along with a sulphur recovery unit, an amine regeneration unit, and other utilities. An upgrading of the fluid catalytic cracker feedstock and other debottlenecking activities will take place.

The upgrade will allow Sohar refinery to provide Aromatics Oman LLC with naphtha feedstock at desired specifications, and will enable ORPC to meet its supply commitments of propylene to Oman Polypropylene.

In addition, the expansion will cater the current and future domestic demand by increasing the production volume of gasoline and diesel, along with high volumes of Bitumen.

CB&I (Dubai) has secured a contract to provide the front-end-engineering and design (FEED), as well as project management services, for the Sohar refinery expansion project. CB&I is an engineering, procurement and construction company and a process technology licensor.

The contract, valued in excess of $40 million, was placed by Oman Refineries and Petrochemical Company.

The Sohar refinery, which was commissioned in 2006, was built to process the feedstock of long residue that is produced at the Mina Al-Fahal Refinery in Oman and blended with crude oil.

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