Russian conglomerate PJSC Sibur Holding, Moscow, has completed a project to expand NGL fractionation capacity by 1.4 million tonnes/year at its Tobolsk (formerly Tobolsk-Neftekhim) processing site in Western Siberia’s Tyumen region (OGJ Online, Apr. 5, 2016; July 14, 2015).
Requiring a total investment of 5.5 billion rubles to complete, the expansion has increased total fractionation capacity at the Tobolsk production site to 8 million tpy from 6.6 million tpy, Sibur said.
The project, which specifically expanded capacity of the Tobolsk’s second fractionation unit to 4.2 million tpy from 2.8 million tpy, involved a series of upgrades to the unit, including installation of new internal equipment, new heat-exchange and pump equipment, and complete replacement of fractionation trays for column equipment.
Additional work included the revamp of an existing loading rack at the site and construction of four 600-cu m spherical propane storage tanks, the operator said.
Upon first announcing the project in 2015, Sibur said the expansion also was to include construction of a cooling tower, as well as work to expand the unit’s ability to process a wider range of feedstock.
The capacity expansion at Tobolsk comes as part of Sibur’s strategy of continuing to focus on expanding its capabilities for deep processing of hydrocarbons competitively sourced via advantaged access to West Siberian NGL feedstock, said Sibur Chairman Dmitry Konov.
Regional program
Sibur has undertaken a series of projects and long-term agreements with Russian oil and gas majors in recent years to help expand access and processing capabilities for NGL feedstock produced in the region as part of its program to develop a petrochemical cluster in Western Siberia under the Russian government’s gas and petrochemical industry development plan through 2030, the company said.
Sibur’s recent initiatives to expand on site processing capacity include startup of a second-phase expansion of its Vyngapurovsky gas processing plant (GPP) in northern Russia’s Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region, which lifted the site’s processing capacity to 4.2 billion cu m/year (with a recovery rate of up to 99%) from 2.8 billion-cu m/year for associated petroleum gas (APG) it receives from OAO NK RussNeft's Western Siberian production fields (OGJ Online, Apr. 1, 2016).
With joint-venture partner PJSC Gazprom Neft, St. Petersburg, the company also commissioned the Yuzhno-Priobskiy GPP in Western Siberia’s Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area, which has a capacity to process 900 million cu m/year of APG and a liquids-recovery rate that exceeds 95% (OGJ Online, Sept. 3, 2015).
To accommodate increased transportation routes for gas feedstock at the Tobolsk processing site, Sibur in 2014 built a 1,100-km, 8 million-tpy pipeline from Purovsk to Tobolsk as well added a 1.5-million tpy rail-loading rack, both of which were designed to support Tobolsk’s fractionation capacity expansion, the company said.
Increased LPG output from its gas fractionation units also has spurred construction of Sibur subsidiary ZapSibNeftekhim LLC’s long-planned ZapSib-2 integrated ethylene, polyethylene, and polypropylene production complex at Tobolsk, which upon its proposed startup in 2019-20, will include a 1.5 million-tpy ethylene steam cracker, four polyethylene production units with a production capacity of 1.5 million tpy, a 500,000-tpy polypropylene production unit, as well as 100,000-tpy butane-butylene fractionation unit (OGJ Online, Feb. 20, 2015).
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
