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In Thailand in April 2011, Thai Oil Co. Ltd. let a contract to a Foster Wheeler AG subsidiary for an upgrade of its 193,000-b/d refinery at Sriracha.
The Foster Wheeler unit is handling basic design engineering and engineering, procurement, and construction management of a project that will enable the refinery to run higher-sulfur crudes, convert fuel oil into lighter products, and lower emissions of sulfur oxides.
The firm will apply deep-cut vacuum technology and install sour-gas handling, including sulfur recovery and tail-gas treatment. It also will expand hydrogen production capacity, now about 28.8 MMcfd via steam reforming of methane, by installing pressure-swing adsorption.
In South Korea, early in 2011, GS Caltex, Seoul, announced it would add upgrading capacity at its 760,000-b/cd refining complex at Yeosu. It planned to spend $978.6 million to add 53,000 b/d of vacuum gas oil fluid catalytic cracking capacity and 24,000 b/d of gasoline hydrodesulfurization capacity.
The upgrade will boost production of propylene by 250,000 tpy at the complex to 450,000 tpy. The complex had 61,000 b/d of resid FCC capacity and 181,000 b/d of resid hydrocracking capacity in three units. GS Caltex is a 50-50 partnership of Chevron Corp. and GS Holdings, Seoul.
In July, Shell Australia announced it would cease refining at its 79,000 b/d Clyde refinery in Sydney and convert it and the Gore Bay terminal into a fuel import site before mid-2013.
The move forced Australia to obtain from overseas the 10% of its refined products that Clyde was currently providing. Clyde was producing 75,000 b/d and had been operating for more than a century. About 85% of the crude required to meet the product mix in Australia was imported from Asia in 2008-09 and about 15% from the Middle East (OGJ, May 2, 2011, Newsletter).
And in July, Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon launched construction of the country's first refinery, a 2,000-b/d plant in Tursunzoda, about 40 km west of the capital, Dushanbe.
Construction was prompted by supply shortages and price increases after Russia imposed prohibitive tariffs on gasoline exports in May to address its own supply shortages (OGJ Online, July 29, 2011).
Rahmon suggested if funding could be found to increase the refinery's capacity to 10,000 b/d, then 90% of Tajikistan's fuel and lubricants would be met by the new installation. Energy analysts claim the kind of refinery envisioned for Tajikistan can be built in 4-5 months at a cost of $100-150 million and could pay for itself within 8 months under local conditions.
Middle East
As active as Asian refining has been this year and appears to continue growing, industry observers have agreed that growth in capacities of several kinds in the Middle East will outpace those in Asia for the remainder of this decade.
This was the main theme of a report released in October from Deutsche Bank AG (OGJ, Oct. 31, 2011, p. 24).
Nearly 5 million b/d of refining capacity will be built in Middle East countries 2010-18, representing more than 20% of global expansion during the period and boosting regional capacity by nearly 60%, said the report.
Saudi Arabia and Iran plan to raise refining capacity by 1.2 million b/d each through 2018, it said. Other major expansions include nearly 900,000 b/d in Kuwait and 620,000 b/d in the UAE.
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