Page 14 - DMEA Week 28 2020

DMEA REFINING DMEA
Brooge close to finishing studies for Fujairah storage expansion
UAE
Phase 3 will bring Brooge’s capacity up to 4.5mn cubic metres, or 28.3mn barrels.
UAE storage operator Brooge Energy is near to completing early technical studies for a phase- three expansion of its facilities in Fujairah, it said on July 15.
e project includes the addition of an extra 3.5mn cubic metres, or 22mn barrels, of oil stor- age space, and the construction of a 180,000 barrel per day (bpd) re nery. MUC Oil & Gas Engineering Consultancy (MUC) has issued the nal basic designs for the facilities, and a front- end engineering design (FEED) study should be ready in the coming weeks.
“Once Phase 3 is completed, this would bring our total storage capacity up to 4.5mn cubic metres, which is the equivalent of 28.3mn bar- rels of oil, Brooge CEO Nicolaas Paardenkooper said.
Brooge is striving to become the largest independent oil storage and service operator in Fujairah, a major hub for both storage and bun- kering operations with a strategic location out- side the Strait of Hormuz. It enjoyed a 23% hike
in revenues last year and is expected to perform even more strongly in 2020, having secured a res- ervation for all the capacity of its second-phase facilities, due to start up later this year.
Brooge is currently in talks for contracts for its third-phase facilities.
“We plan to ensure that Phase 3 capacity is fully contracted through a multiyear take-or- pay contract [before launching] construction to ensure revenue stability and visibility,” Paarden- kooper said.
Storage is in high demand as a result of coro- navirus (COVID-19) lockdowns, which caused fuel demand to collapse and left producers unable to cut supplies fast enough. is led to record high storage levels across the world, and the Fujairah port even reached full utilisation at one point.
Brooge signed a land lease agreement in Feb- ruary with Fujairah Oil Industrial Zone for an extra 450,000 square metres on land on which to build the third-phase facilities. ™
Kuwati refining project at risk of further delay
KUWAIT
Caption Caption The re nery had been due on stream in the fourthq quarter of this year.
KUWAIT is likely once again to push back the launch of its long-delayed al-Zour refinery project, sources told Argus on July 6, because of the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
e re nery in the southern port of al-Zour had been due to come on stream in the fourth quarter of this year. It will be capable of process- ing up to 615,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, making it the largest re nery in the Middle East.
The project, with a budget of KWD3.7bn ($12bn), is being managed by KIPEC, a subsidi- ary of state-owned KPC. e subsidiary’s acting CEO, Hatem al-Awadhi, said last month that construction was more than 95% complete.
According to Argus, though, several services rms and contractors hired have invoked force majeure, as restrictions on movement and pub- lic gatherings mean they have been unable to receive equipment and complete work on time. KPC has established a team to address the issue, sources said, and negotiations with contractors
are continuing. It is also reviewing whether COVID-19 can be considered a force majeure event.
Kuwait began imposing restrictions on air travel and land movement in mid-March, not long after the country reported its first con- rmed cases of the virus. is included a full suspension of international ights to and from Kuwait International Airport on March 13, besides repatriation ights and air cargo.
Kuwaiti authorities announced this month that commercial passenger flights would be resumed on August 1, as part of a ve-phase plan to ease all restrictions by mid-September.
The al-Zour refinery will bolster Kuwait’s overall oil-processing capacity from around 800,000 bpd to 1.415mn bpd. The country is also upgrading its existing Mine al-Ahmadi and Mina Abdullah re neries, not only to raise capacity to 1.6mn bpd by 2025, but also to pro- duce more higher-value products such as diesel and kerosene that can be exported. ™
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Week 28 16•July•2020