Foster Wheeler subsidiary awarded contracts by STRAS for planned grassroots refinery at Turkey

24-Jun-10

Foster Wheeler AG’s subsidiary has been awarded contracts by SOCAR & TURCAS Rafineri A.S. (STRAS) for its planned grassroots refinery to be built within the Petkim Petrokimya A.S. (PETKIM) facilities at Aliaga, Turkey. The contracts cover overall front-end engineering design for the new refinery and the license and basic design package for the delayed coker, which will use Foster Wheeler’s leading SYDECSM delayed coking technology. The planned new facility will have a capacity of 214,000 barrels per stream day (BPSD). Naphtha and fuel oil from the hydrocracking unit will be delivered to PETKIM for petrochemical use. The refinery will include crude and vacuum distillation units, naphtha hydrotreating, a 40,000 BPSD delayed coking unit, a 66,000 BPSD hydrocracking unit, kerosene and diesel hydrotreaters, LPG caustic treatment units, a 28,000 BPSD continuous catalytic reformer, a saturated gas unit, an amine and sour water stripper, sulfur and tail gas treatment units and a 160,000 Nm3/h hydrogen unit, as well as utilities, auxiliary systems and offsite facilities. The SYDECSM process as configured for this project will be designed to maximize clean liquid yields while minimizing fuel coke yields. Foster Wheeler’s scope of work under these contracts is expected to be completed by the end of 2010. “Our vision is to become the leading oil and gas company in Turkey with the creation of refining and petrochemicals integration,” said Batu Aksoy, Executive Board Member of SOCAR & TURCAS Rafineri A.S. “We are implementing major investments to achieve this goal and to sustain our growth, and we are indeed very pleased to award these contracts to Foster Wheeler which has a long-standing presence in Turkey and can deliver our requirements for a high standard of expertise.” Foster Wheeler’s SYDECSM process is a flexible thermal conversion process used by refiners worldwide to upgrade heavy residue feed and process it into high value transport fuels and coke products for fuel and metallurgical markets. The SYDEC(SM) process can be designed to maximize clean liquid yields while minimizing fuel coke yields, or to achieve other objectives, for example, to minimize heavy gas oil yields or to produce specific grades of coke for industrial use. Foster Wheeler is a market leader in delayed coking and has supplied its process technology worldwide for over 80 new cokers and has implemented more than 70 delayed coker revamps.