Kurdish refinery launches expansion plans

March 3, 2014
Qaiwan Group, Dubai, has issued a call for bids related to the planned expansion of its 34,000-b/d Bazian refinery 25 km from Sulaymaniyah on the coastal belt of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Qaiwan Group, Dubai, has issued a call for bids related to the planned expansion of its 34,000-b/d Bazian refinery 25 km from Sulaymaniyah on the coastal belt of Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

The company has invited bids for engineering, procurement, and construction for Phase 3 of its Bazian refinery expansion project (BREP3), Qaiwan said.

Launch of the tender follows completion of BREP3’s front-end engineering design, currently in progress by France’s Technip SA, which also completed conceptual design for the project in late 2012, according to Qaiwan.

The BREP3 project, designed to increase Bazian’s refining capacity to 84,000 b/d, will add processing units at the refinery, including a 50,000-b/d crude distillation unit, a 33,500-b/d naphtha hydrotreating unit, a 22,500-b/d continuous catalytic reformer, a 10,500-b/d isomerization unit, and a 13,500-b/d kerosene kydrotreating unit, Qaiwan said.

An amine regeneration, sulfur recovery unit, and waste water treatment unit with supporting off-sites and utilities on a grassroots site adjacent to the existing refinery also will be added as part of the project, according to the company.

Qaiwan expects the addition of the distillation unit and supporting utilities to be completed by fourth-quarter 2016, with the remaining additions due for completion by fourth-quarter 2017, the company said.

The company plans to award the EPC contract during this year’s third quarter.

In coordination with the BREP3 project and to maximize efficiency at the plant, the company also is in the design stage of a 110-km, 18-in., 125,000 b/d pipeline that will link the refinery to regional oil production fields. Basic design for the pipeline by Technip Germany will be completed at the end of March, Qaiwan said.

The Bazian refinery—which currently produces gasoline, kerosene, and diesel for the consumer market, and naphtha and fuel oil for the industrial market—was originally established in 2009 with two identical 10,000-b/d CDUs designed to process crudes with 32-36° API gravity.

Qaiwan unit Bezhan Pet Co. was commissioned in 2009 to complete, rehabilitate, construct, develop, finance, and operate the 20,000-b/d refinery, which at that time had an actual capacity of 12,000 b/d while processing 47° API gravity crude. The first phase of expansion at Bazian was completed in September 2010, which through a series of upgrades, BPC increased to a 34,000-b/d capacity in August 2012, according to Qaiwan.