Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has been awarded the Ras Tanura Refinery Clean Fuels and Aromatics Project, the first major project to be awarded under the Saudi Aramco general engineering and project management services (GES+) contract. Jacobs is executing the project from its office in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
The project’s scope of services includes pre-front-end engineering and design (pre-FEED) services. In addition, the project includes modifications to the refinery to comply with future environmental regulations. The Ras Tanura refinery is located in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) and affiliates of ExxonMobil Chemical have announced that front-end engineering and design (FEED) contracts were awarded and that all components are in FEED phase for the proposed new elastomers project at their Al-Jubail Petrochemical Co. (KEMYA) joint-venture petrochemical plant. FEED contracts were awarded to Jacobs Engineering Inc. and Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding for process units, and to Fluor Transworld Services Inc. for associated support facilities.
The project is expected to establish a domestic supply of more than 400,000 metric tons of rubber [butyl, styrene butadiene rubber (SBR), butadiene rubber and EPDM], thermoplastic specialty polymers and carbon black to serve emerging local and international markets in Asia and the Middle East.
The project also includes the establishment of a vocational training center and product application development and support center aligned with Saudi Arabia’s National Industrial Clusters Development Program to grow and diversify the manufacturing sector in Saudi Arabia.
Third-party license agreements have been signed with Continental Carbon Co., for its carbon-black production technology, and with The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. for its SBR and polybutadiene rubber technology. The University of Akron Research Foundation was selected to design, train and support the vocational training center, The High Institute for Elastomer Industries, in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Aramco has signed a hydro-cracking unit license agreement with Chevron Lummus Global (CLG) for applying CLG’s ISOCRACKING technology to the Jazan Refinery Project that is in the front-end engineering and design (FEED) phase. The CLG-licensed hydrocracker will be used to convert 106,000 bpd of vacuum gas oil—from the new 400,000-bpd Jazan refinery—into high-quality diesel fuel, meeting EURO–V quality requirements. With this award, ISOCRACKING technology has been selected by Saudi Aramco for their newest refinery projects in the Kingdom.
CLG will provide an engineering package—including the hydrocracking reactors, proprietary ISOMIX internals, ISOCRACKING catalysts, and follow-up technical support during the detailed engineering design, training prior to startup, and startup support—during the new refinery’s commissioning.
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) and Mitsubishi Rayon Co. (MRC) have formed a 50/50 joint-venture company, to build and operate two plants—one for methyl methacrylate (MMA), and the other for polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)—at one of SABIC’s manufacturing affiliates in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The next phase of this project will focus on the basic engineering design, completion of: supply agreements, regulatory approvals and necessary details for the JV incorporation, implementation and execution activities.
The MMA plant will reportedly be the largest ever built, with a 250,000-metric-tpy capacity. It will use Lucite International’s (LI’s) Alpha technology. LI is a subsidiary of MRC, acquired in 2009. The PMMA plant will be based on MRC technology and will have a capacity of 40,000 metric tpy. HP