Business | Oil & Gas
Kuwait to expand refinery capacity
Kuwait plans to boost the crude processing capacity of its Mina Abdullah refinery by 104,000 barrels per day (bpd) by mid-2012, an official at state refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) said.
- REuters
- Published: 00:05 February 27, 2008
Abu Dhabi: Kuwait plans to boost the crude processing capacity of its Mina Abdullah refinery by 104,000 barrels per day (bpd) by mid-2012, an official at state refiner Kuwait National Petroleum Co (KNPC) said.
The expansion forms part of Kuwait's plans to raise refinery capacity to 1.415 million bpd from 930,000 bpd.
"The expansion project is scheduled for completion in June 2012," Nasser Al Shamma, manager of technical services at the refinery, said on the sidelines of an energy conference.
The expansion will take total crude processing capacity at the plant to 374,000 bpd from 270,000 bpd.
The completion date for the Mina Abdullah expansion has been pushed back from 2011 due to delays in the plans for Kuwait's giant new 615,000 bpd Al Zour refinery, Shamma said. The Zour refinery has been delayed by more than a year due to spiralling costs.
A new crude processing unit (CPU) with capacity of 264,000 bpd will be built at Mina Abdullah, while an old CPU with capacity of 80,000 bpd will be retired, Shamma said.
KNPC also plans to add a diesel-producing hydrocracking unit and a desulphurisation plant at the plant, he added.
Fluor Daniel is undertaking the engineering and design study for the expansion, which should be finished by June, he said.
KNPC plans to carry out maintenance at the hydrocracking unit for 26 days in June, Shamma said.
The capacity of the hydrocracking unit stands at about 40,000 bpd.
Kuwait is also revamping its 460,000 bpd Mina al-Ahmadi refinery, currently the largest in the country.
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