Page 12 - DMEA Week 15 2021

DMEA REFINING DMEA

Early operations to begin

at Al-Zour in November

MIDDLE EAST KUWAIT’S 615,000-barrel per day (bpd) Covid-19 and restricted travel into the country
Al-Zour refinery is tabbed to begin first refining in early February.
operations in November having reached 97.83% Test runs are understood to be ongoing,
completion as of the end of February. while oil feedstock began flowing to the refinery
The progress was announced by the country’s through a dedicated pipeline on December 1.
Minister of Oil and Minister of Higher Educa- The project dovetails with the Clean Fuels
tion Dr Muhammad Al-Fares in a statement to Project (CFP), which comprises of the upgrade
press. He explained that the first mini refining and expansion of the two existing refineries at
unit will begin operations in November, as it Mina Abdullah and Mina al-Ahmadi to a com-
gradually ramps up ahead of being fully opera- bined capacity of 800,000 bpd. A 264,000-bpd
tional at the end of Q1 2022. crude distillation unit (CDU) was brought
The project, which once commissioned, will on-stream at Mina Abdullah in December.
be the Middle East’s largest refinery to have been Al-Fares said that a biofuel project is being
built in a single stage, is a key part of the emirate’s gradually implemented at both refineries with
plans to expand its downstream capabilities. the combined completion rate of the facilities
The refinery at the southern port of Al-Zour having reached 99.29%. He noted that while all
is being developed by Kuwait Integrated Petro- units at Mina Al-Ahmadi have been completed,
leum Industries Co. (KIPIC), a subsidiary of work is still ongoing at several units at Mina
state oil firm Kuwait Petroleum Corp. (KPC). Abdullah with completion now anticipated in
KIPIC had set a target commissioning date of July.
late 2020, pushing this back to Q1 2021 as restric- The CFP and Al-Zour projects are estimated
tions relating to Covid-19 slowed progress. to cost $15.7bn and $16.1bn respectively, with
Several services firms and contractors the latter figure including the cost of associated
involved in the development of Al-Zour were LNG facilities.
reported to have attempted to invoke force Downstream-focused Kuwait National
majeure with restrictions having made it impos- Petroleum Co. (KNPC) has plans in place to
sible to meet deadlines, while Kuwait recently more than double its refining capacity to 2mn
re-introduced measures to halt the spread of bpd by 2035 under a $25bn plan.™

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