Page 11 - DMEA Week 11 2021

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Al-Zour delays continue

MIDDLE EAST THE commissioning and start of operations at bpd. A 264,000-bpd crude distillation unit
Kuwait’s new 615,000-barrel per day (bpd) at the (CDU) was brought on-stream at Mina Abdul-
southern port of Al-Zour will miss the latest in a lah in December.
string of deadlines set by developer Kuwait Inte- The CFP and Al-Zour are estimated to cost
grated Petroleum Industries Co. (KIPIC). $15.7bn and $16.1bn respectively, with the lat-
The project, which once commissioned, will ter figure including the cost of associated LNG
be the Middle East’s largest refinery to have been facilities. On completion next year, Al-Zour will
built in a single stage, is a key part of the emirate’s become the region’s largest to be built in a single
plans to expand its downstream capabilities. phase.
KIPIC had set a target commissioning date Downstream-focused Kuwait National
of late 2020, pushing this back to Q1 this year Petroleum Co. (KNPC) has plans in place to
as restrictions relating to Covid-19 slowed pro- more than double its refining capacity to 2mn
gress, but Downstream MEA (DMEA) under- bpd by 2035 under a $25bn plan.
stands from sources close to proceedings the The plan was put in motion several years ago
project is now unlikely to be ready begin oper- to ramp up output from the combined 936,000
ations until Q4 or early 2022. bpd of the Mina al-Ahmadi, Mina Abdullah, and
Meanwhile, a recent report by Argus cor- Shuaiba refineries. The 200,000-bpd Shuaiba
roborates the talk of delays. Quoting unnamed facility was closed in March 2017.
sources, the report said that several services Al-Zour is the focal point of the first phase
firms and contractors involved in the develop- of expansion, which will take capacity to 1.7mn
ment of Al-Zour had attempted to invoke force bpd by 2025, with the second phase, which will
majeure with restrictions having made it impos- include a new refinery, taking this figure to 2mn
sible to meet deadlines. Kuwait recently re-intro- bpd by 2035.
duced measures to halt the spread of Covid-19 The refinery will be integrated with a world-
and has restricted travel into the country since scale petrochemical facility, which is due to be
early February. completed in 2023, ahead of 2024 start-up. The
Test runs are understood to be ongoing, petchems arm is intended to produce around
while oil feedstock began flowing to the refinery 2.8mn tonnes per year of petrochemicals. This
through a dedicated pipeline on December 1. includes 1.4mn tpy of paraxylene (PX), 940,000
The project dovetails with the emirate’s tpy of polypropylene (PP) and 420,000 tpy of
so-called Clean Fuels Project (CFP), which com- gasoline.
prises of the upgrade and expansion of the two KIPIC is a subsidiary of state oil firm Kuwait
existing refineries at Mina Abdullah and Mina Petroleum Corp. (KPC) and was set up to
al-Ahmadi to a combined capacity of 800,000 develop the project.™

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