Al Shaheen Refinery, Mesaieed Industrial City, Qatar

Qatar Petroleum is to build a further grass roots refinery at Mesaieed Industrial City to process crude oil from the Al Shaheen field situated about 180km north of Doha and operated by Maersk Oil Qatar AS.

The field, first developed in 1994 (discovered in 1992), produces over 260,000bpd but could be producing over 400,000bpd over the next five years if demand and processing capacity allow (over $2.5bn has already been invested in the field).

The field's crude oil production is currently taken by customers from a floating production storage and offloading vessel in the block 5 field (the field also produces gas which is piped for use in Mesaieed-based facilities).

Part of the new refinery project will involve the construction of an offshore and onshore pipeline to supply the new refinery. Qatar Petroleum has said that the refinery is part of a plan 'to increase crude oil production capacity from 850,000 to one million barrels a day'.

REFINERY IN QATAR

Jacobs Engineering, in conjunction with Beicip Inc of France, were the two companies who undertook the pre-Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) work on the Al Shaheen refinery project. Then in August 2007 Technip was awarded a lump sum FEED and project management contract for the refinery.

The contract is worth an estimated $60m and will be undertaken by Technip's Paris and Abu Dhabi design offices. The work involves a refinery with a capacity of 250,000bpd of crude oil from the Shaheen field. The refinery products will include high-grade fuel products such as gasoline, diesel oil, gas oil and jet fuel. There will also be a crude oil transport pipeline from the Al Shaheen field to the Mesaieed Industrial City, which will include a 90km offshore section, a 110km onshore section and also other required import / export infrastructure at Mesaieed.

Refinery technology will also include some special new technology conversion units for the upgrading of bottom-of-barrel products to increase the production of marketable fuel distillates (the refinery will also produce green coke and bitumen). The refinery units are expected to be operational by the end of 2011.

AL SHAHEEN REFINERY CONTRACTS

Construction is expected to start by the end of 2008 and the call for bid tenders for the Engineering Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract was made in early January 2008 and expressions of interest were due in by mid-January.

The whole project cost including the refinery and pipeline has been estimated at $5bn. Qatar Petroleum will finalise the prequalification and invite bids for the lump sum EPC construction contract by May 2008 and will finalise the contract in November 2008 with construction beginning shortly after.

Interest has been shown by a number of companies including: Daelim Industrial Company, GS Engineering & Construction, Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company and SK Engineering & Construction, Technip of France, Foster Wheeler and Washington Group International.