Case study

Al-Zour refinery project

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Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) Al-Zour refinery project

Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC)

Kuwait

Dan Carter

President, Decarbonisation

Anne-Sophie Amiot

Refining & Chemicals Consultancy Manager

Bryan Knost

VP of operations - Downstream and Chemicals

Al-Zour Refinery will allow for significant reductions in SOx emissions from current levels produced by domestic power plants

The world’s largest one-time refinery construction to date

Producing 225,000 Barrel Per Stream Day (BPSD) of low sulphur fuel oil for power stations and 340,000 Barrel Per Stream Day (BPSD) of the latest environmentally friendly ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel, jet fuel and kerosene for export

Project overview

Wood’s multi-disciplinary global team successfully delivered project management services for the Al-Zour Refinery project, Kuwait - one of the largest refineries built in one phase - for Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC), a subsidiary of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC).

About the Al-Zour Refinery project?

The Al-Zour Refinery project was a greenfield, environmentally driven project and part of Kuwait’s National Development Plan. The plan sets out the nation’s long-term development priorities, including the aim to position the country as a global hub for the refining and petrochemicals industry.

This project was an ambitious world-scale project delivering a new grassroots, state-of-the-art refinery, with the flexibility to refine a wide range of crude oils and for future development into an integrated refinery and petrochemical complex.

The refinery, approximately 90 kilometres south of Kuwait City, is one of the largest refineries built in one phase and has the capacity to process 615,000 barrels per day (bpd) of a wide slate of Kuwait domestic crude oils, including Kuwait export crude and Kuwait heavy crude.

The refinery is at the forefront of new technology adoption to comply with stringent environmental regulations to protect the local environment. It is configured to produce 225,000 bpd of low sulphur fuel oil (LSFO) to meet the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) fuel demand for domestic power stations, significantly reducing SO_x emissions produced from the power stations. The refinery also produces 340,000 BPSD of the latest environmentally friendly ultra-low sulphur diesel fuel, jet fuel, kerosene and granulated sulphur for export to global markets and naphtha feedstock for local petrochemical plants.

Project delivery and Wood scope

The project was implemented in five Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) packages involving the design and construction of main and support process units, utilities and offsites, tankage, and marine facilities.

Wood’s partnership on the project dates to 2012, with the initial award of a Project Management Consultancy (PMC) services contract by then operator Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC). Since then, our team has partnered to evolve the development, award and management of multiple EPC contracts on this world scale project.

We have aligned to assume responsibility for key elements of the project delivery including overall project management and coordination between all project participants, reviewing and coordinating engineering and construction activities, and interfaces between the EPC contractors. The project leadership team was based in Kuwait with support teams in London and other global Wood offices.

During the project, Wood and KIPIC worked towards several key goals focused on driving efficiencies and unlocking future energy solutions through the provision of professional project management and consultancy services. As part of our team-based project management methodology, we developed systems and tools that enabled a collaborative approach to interface management, on-site activity coordination, completions management, reduction in risk, adherence to cost estimates and schedules, and maintain high standards of health, safety and quality.

Collaborating as ‘one Wood’

To address specific needs at critical stages of the project, we collaborated with our extended Wood team to draw upon the expertise of our global offices in providing:

Direct support from our offices in Madrid, Paris, Milan, Chennai, Shanghai and Seoul; locations local to the EPC contractor’s execution centres.
Automation and control expertise in Houston to oversee EPC contractor’s factory acceptance test activities including hardware, software, and network testing associated with the process control and safety instrumented systems.
Flow assurance and subsea pipeline expertise from our office in Staines to verify pipeline flow hydraulics and surge calculations.
Construction, inspection, and completions experts from our office in Shanghai to support the project’s large-scale onshore modular execution strategy at a fabrication yard in Zhuhai, China, where more than 75,000 metric tons of modules were fabricated over 18 months.

To ensure all project stakeholders were aligned to completion, Wood’s proprietary Go Technology Hub2 was utilised as a common platform to manage all completions activities of the EPC contractors in module yards and at site. The fully synchronised and centralised data management hub provided a real-time solution to input, track and report completions progress, building from design stage through construction and completions into operations.

Supporting Kuwait’s energy transition?

Involvement with this project has allowed Wood to play a significant role in contributing to Kuwait’s energy transition. The success was possible through our market-leading expertise in delivering mega-projects and the seamless teamwork from our project leadership team in Kuwait with our UK, India and other worldwide offices, highlighting the ability of Wood to unlock solutions and support our customers on their energy transition journey.