Page 12 - DMEA Week 34 2021

DMEA REFINING DMEA

MIDOR completion remains on track for 2022

AFRICA WORK to expand capacity at Egypt’s Middle and the Egyptian Ministry of Finance acted as
East Oil Refinery (MIDOR) is on schedule, with guarantors.
early operations set to begin by the end of the UK-based TechnipFMC was provisionally
year ahead of full completion in 2022. named as the EPC contractor back in 2015 but
Following a tour to inspect the facility near only signed the estimated $1.7bn deal in Octo-
Alexandria, the country’s Minister of Petroleum ber 2018, shortly after belated financial close. The
& Mineral Resources Tarek El Molla said that the US’ UOP is supplying the technology.
first stage of the project has now been completed, The expansion scheme is one of several
allowing for partial start-up. greenfield and brownfield projects in train to
The overall project will raise the refinery’s boost national refining capacity and reduce
throughput capacity from 100,000 barrels per costly imports of cleaner fuels.
day to 160,000 bpd and increase the output of In 2018, TechnipFMC was given permission
Euro-5 standard products. to proceed with early works on an estimated
The expansion includes the construction of $1.9bn project to install a hydrocracking com-
new crude and vacuum distillation units (CDU plex at the 4.5mn tonne per year (tpy) EGPC-
& VDU), a diesel hydrotreater, a hydrogen unit owned Assiut refinery in Upper Egypt.
and solvent deasphalting. The capacities of The largest venture undertaken under this
existing naphtha hydrotreater, naphtha splitter, programme was the $3.4bn, 140,000 bpd Mos-
isomerisation, hydrocracker, LPG treatment torod refinery, which was inaugurated in Sep-
& recovery and sulphur plants are also being tember last year. The facility was developed by
expanded. a consortium led by private local firm Qalaa
The existing diesel hydrotreater will be con- Holdings adjacent to the existing 145,000 bpd
verted into a kerosene unit that will process government refinery on the outskirts of Cairo.
crude, while tanks and auxiliary units are being In common with downstream projects
expanded to cater to the refinery’s upgraded across the country, the scheme struggled to raise
capacity. finance even before the years of political and
Once complete, the project is designed to economic turmoil ushered in by the 2011 rev-
increase MIDOR’s product slate, more than dou- olution further derailed financiers’ confidence.
bling LPG output, nearly tripling jet fuel produc- Italian export credit agency SACE helped fund
tion and raising high-octane gasoline and diesel the MIDOR and Assiut projects.
by 60% and 45% respectively. However, both government finances and
MIDOR is majority-owned by Cairo’s Egyp- investor sentiment have substantially recovered
tian General Petroleum Corp. (EGPC), along- over the past few years, while the resurgence of
side local contractors ENPPI and Petrojet. the country’s upstream gas industry has created
$1.2bn of financing for the project was pro- bullishness throughout the energy sector.
vided by a consortium of banks that included In late February 2019, Petroleum Minister
BNP Paribas, CDP Bank and Credit Agricole, Tareq el-Molla declared a target of achieving
while the Italian Export Credit Agency (SACE) refined product self-sufficiency by 2022.™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 34 26•August•2021