Page 8 - DMEA Week 12 2021

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Aramco kicks off Jazan,

Riyadh refinery attacked

MIDDLE EAST STATE-OWNED Saudi Aramco this week high-sulphur fuel oil and 6,700 bpd of LPG,
announced that its new 400,000 barrel per day according to Aramco.
(bpd) Jazan refinery had come into operation as Also located within the ‘Economic City’ is the
another Houthi drone attack targeted its Riyadh Jazan Integrated Gas Combined-Cycle (IGCC)
refining unit. plant for which Aramco established the $8bn
During a conference call, the company’s pres- Jazan Power JV last year to serve the refinery.
ident and CEO Amin Nasser said that Jazan was The JV is 46% owned by Air Products, 25% by
“on stream” and running at around 50% capac- ACWA Power, 20% by Saudi Aramco and 9% by
ity. Aramco’s plan was always to bring the facility Air Products Qudra.
into operation in two stages, attaining capacity The private partners are carrying out a
by the end of this year. design-build contract awarded in 2015 covering
The facility is located on the Kingdom’s Red the air separation unit and oxygen supply facility
Sea coast around 40 km from the border with – at capacity of 20,000 tonnes per day of oxygen
Yemen. This location has made it the repeated and 55,000 tpd of nitrogen billed as the world’s
target of strikes by Yemen’s Houthi militia, while largest industrial gases complex – at the 4,000-
being far from Saudi Arabia’s oil production hub MW plant.
in the Eastern province means that cargoes of The remainder of the IGCC project is being
crude have arrived by sea. executed on an engineering, procurement and
Around 4mn barrels were shipped there in construction (EPC) basis – with Italy’s Saipem,
late 2019 ahead of the refinery beginning opera- China’s Sepco and Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas
tions, with Nasser noting that further crude car- winning the four main packages in 2014. The
goes had arrived in Q1 this year. new three-way JV will operate the gasification
Jazan has been the source of numerous head- and power assets for 25 years from completion,
aches for Aramco. which is scheduled this year.
In the company’s 2020 Annual Report, it
noted: “Saudi Aramco recognised an impair- Riyadh in the crosshairs
ment of SAR13,646mn [$3.6bn] for the year On March 19, the Houthis launched a six-drone
ended December 31, 2016 primarily related to attack on Aramco’s refinery in the Saudi cap-
the Jazan integrated petrochemical refinery ital Riyadh, with the Saudi Ministry of Energy
under construction and two existing domestic later saying that a fire at the facility had been
refineries.” contained.
Delays were caused when the decision was In comments carried by the official Saudi
taken to move the under-construction refinery Press Agency, the ministry said that the attack
to make way for new export facilities. had not resulted in any casualties or any inter-
Jazan will have a capacity to produce 209,900 ruption to oil supplies.
bpd of ultra-low sulphur diesel, 71,400 bpd of The refinery has a crude distillation capacity
91 RON and 95 RON gasoline, 48,500 bpd of of around 140,000 bpd.™

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 12 25•March•2021