São Paulo – Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company based in Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading oil producing and exporting country, announced today (28th) that it has hired seven companies to build an export-oriented refinery in Yanbu, in the Red Sea. Three of the companies are based in the Arab country itself, and four are foreign. They are going to work on a US$ 10 billion project, according to estimates made by news agency Dow Jones. Aramco has not disclosed the value of the contracts.
According to information supplied by the oil company, the refinery will be built in an area of 5.2 million square metres, and when ready it will have capacity for processing 400,000 barrels per day of heavy oil, producing 90,000 barrels per day of gasoline, 263,000 barrels of diesel with very low sulphur rates, 6,300 daily tonnes of petroleum coke, and 1,200 tonnes of sulphur.
According to a release issued by Aramco, the company is investing in refining after having increased its crude oil production capacity to 12 million barrels per day. For the sake of illustration, production in Brazil is around 2 million daily barrels.
The companies hired were Tecnicas Reunidas, from Spain; SK Engineering & Construction Company and Daelim, both based in South Korea; Enppi, from Egypt; Saudi Services, Dayim Punj Lloyd and Rajeh H Al-Marri, from Saudi Arabia.
The idea, according to the state-owned company, is to use as many local products and services as possible. According to the CEO of the Red Sea Refining Company, a subsidiary established recently in order to manage the project, 70% of the enterprise’s value will be spent domestically. In Brazil, the government and Petrobras also intend to use domestic products and services as much as they can in exploring the newly discovered pre-salt oil layer.
Aramco’s release informs that the contracts announced today concern the refinery’s main processing units, but that other contracts are yet to be signed. A contract for preparing the land had already been signed, early this year, with the Abdulrahman Al-Shalawi Establishment company. The project was launched in 2006, according to the release.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
