Duqm Refinery, whose construction is advancing at the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Duqm on Oman’s southeast coast, is slated for commissioning as early as late next year or early 2022, Argus Media, a leading news portal on global energy and commodity markets, announced on Friday, citing the Sultanate’s Minister of Energy and Minerals.
Dr Mohammed bin Hamad al Rumhy was quoted in the interview as stating that the estimated $7 billion greenfield refinery is expected to process its first crude before the end of 2021 or in early 2022 — well ahead of the timeline initially envisaged for the delivery of the strategically vital national project.
When fully operational, the refinery — an anchor project of the SEZ — has the potential to catalyse a wave of new investment in support services, ancillary infrastructure and an array of civilian amenities. Together with the construction of the much-larger petrochemicals scheme envisaged downstream of the refinery, the integrated scheme is expected to make a robust contribution to Oman’s long-term economic and GDP growth.
Duqm Refinery and Petrochemical Industries Company (DRPIC), a joint venture of OQ – the wholly Omani government owned integrated energy group, and Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI), is developing the refinery and petrochemicals complex with a combined investment estimated in excess of $15 billion. The 230,000 barrels per day (bpd) capacity refinery will process various types of crudes into diesel, jet fuel, naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
As of end-July 2020, construction work on the refinery was well past the 65 per cent mark with an army of workers, employed by a bevy of contractors and subcontractors, currently deployed at site. Also making headway is the construction of an Oil Berth at the Port of Duqm as well as the first phase of a world-scale Crude Oil Storage Park at Ras Markaz just south of the SEZ.
According to the Argus report, storage capacity of around 6 million barrels capacity is being developed at Ras Markaz to meet the needs of Duqm Refinery. Feedstock for the refinery, comprising a mix of 65 per cent Kuwaiti crude and 35 per cent Omani crude, will be stored at Ras Markaz and piped to the refinery via an 80-km crude pipeline, also due to be commissioned around mid-2021.
The park’s capacity will be gradually ramped up based on the requirements of international and regional customers eager to take advantage of Duqm’s strategic location far outside the relatively volatile Arabian Gulf to store their crudes.
Underscoring the strategic nature of this signature development to the Sultanate’s economic growth, the timeline for the implementation of the downstream petrochemicals complex is being accelerated as well. Construction work on the complex, currently the subject of a Front End Engineering Design (FEED) by UK’s Wood Group, is expected to start by 2022, with the integrated plant set to be operational in 2026, the report added. Last week, DRPIC named 12 international licensors as winners of technology licence packages for various units of the giant petrochemicals scheme.
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