SNC-Lavalin has announced that it has been awarded a contract by the Iraq Ministry of Oil’s State Company for Oil Projects (SCOP) to provide engineering services for the Iraq Export Pipeline Project.

Working closely with SCOP, SNC-Lavalin will provide front-end engineering design (FEED); long-lead items tendering and evaluation; and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) tendering and evaluation for two pipeline systems and five pump station facilities. Once completed, the pipeline system will transport 2.25 million barrels of crude oil per day and 258 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per day from a station near Basra to a station near Haditha. The work will be carried out from SNC-Lavalin’s offices in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

“We are very pleased to support SCOP,” said Terrance Ivers, Executive Vice-President, Oil & Gas, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. “The Iraq Export Pipeline project is well aligned with SNC-Lavalin’s extensive pipeline capabilities and experience in the Middle East.”

Yokogawa has announced that its subsidiary, Yokogawa Middle East & Africa, has received an order from Petroleum, Chemicals & Mining Company Limited*1 (PCMC) to supply the control system for the SWRO-4 Desalination Plant, which is being built in Jubail, Saudi Arabia by the Power & Water Utility Company for Jubail and Yanbu (Marafiq).

Jubail, located in the northern part of the Arabian Gulf, is one of the two major industrial cities in Saudi Arabia (the other is Yanbu on the Red Sea), and Marafiq provides electricity and water to both cities. The plant under construction, SWRO-4, will utilize reverse osmosis (RO) membranes to desalinate seawater*2, and will be able to produce 100,000 cubic meters of potable water per day. This is greater than the combined output of 77,000 cubic meters per day from the five desalination plants that Marafiq currently owns and operates in Jubail. The desalinated water from the new plant will be provided to the Jubail area.

Yokogawa will deliver the CENTUM® VP integrated production control system and the Plant Resource Manager (PRM®) integrated device management package, the latter of which will be used for the monitoring and online diagnosis of the instrumentation devices in this plant. In addition, Yokogawa will deliver an operator training system to improve operator performance. Yokogawa Middle East & Africa is responsible for the entire project, including the engineering and commissioning of these products. Delivery is scheduled for 2014 and the plant will start operation at the end of September 2014.

In the Middle East, there is a serious water shortage due to rapid industrialization and population growth, especially in urban areas. To alleviate this problem, there are plans to construct many desalination plants. Desalination plants that use RO membranes are more efficient than those that rely on the evaporation of seawater, and so there is considerable demand for the construction of such plants throughout this region, as well as in other regions such as North America and Asia. Yokogawa aims to leverage this order to expand its control business with desalination plants and other segments of the water infrastructure market.

(Reuters) BP has signed 30-year gas production sharing and sales deals to develop Oman's Khazzan tight gas project at an estimated investment of $16 billion, the UK energy giant and Omani government announced on Monday.  The Khazzan gas project, which aims to extract around one billion cubic feet (bcf) per day of gas from deep under central Oman, is a showcase for BP's tight gas extraction technology and its success is vital for Oman's economy.

"Today's signing is an important step in the Sultanate of Oman's plans to meet growing demand for energy over the coming decades and to contribute to economic development in Oman," Oman oil and gas minister, Mohammed Al Rumhy, said in a statement after the signing in Muscat.

"The Khazzan project is the largest new upstream project in Oman and a pioneering development in the region in unlocking technically challenging tight gas through technology."

BP has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the project since winning the concession in 2007. It expects total investment of around $16 billion, equivalent to about a fifth of Oman's annual economic output, and hopes to extract enough fuel to meet around a third of Oman's current domestic gas needs.

"We are very pleased to be going ahead with this major project, which is very important for both Oman and for BP," BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said in the joint statement.  "This enables BP to bring to Oman the experience it has built up in tight gas production over many decades."

Construction is expected to begin in 2014, with first gas expected in late 2017 and plateau production of around 1 bcf, or 28.3 million cubic metres, per day expected in 2018.  BP, which will operate the project in central Oman, expects to develop around 7 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas in the Khazzan project, and to pump around 25,000 barrels per day (bpd) of gas condensate, a light oil, from the field.

The production sharing agreement and a gas sales agreement also allow BP to appraise more gas resources in Oman's Block 61, which it expects to develop later.  State-owned Oman Oil Company Exploration & Production will hold a 40 percent stake in Block 61, while BP will hold 60 percent.  BP said it had also signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with state-run and Oman Oil Company to develop a one million tonne per year acetic acid plant in Duqm, on the Arabian Sea coast of Oman.

After months of haggling, Muscat agreed in mid-2013 on the price at which BP could sell any gas it can squeeze from deep underground in Block 61 in central Oman. The agreed price has not been disclosed.

Honeywell  today announced that it has been selected by Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) to provide the Integrated Control and Safety System (ICSS) for its new 615,000 barrel-a-day Al Zour refinery complex to be built in southern Kuwait. Honeywell will also provide the front-end engineering design (FEED) for the system.  This will be Kuwait’s fourth refinery and the largest refinery in the entire Middle East. The total capacity of Kuwait’s three current refineries is 930,000 barrels a day. The new refinery is targeted for start-up in 2018.

“With this new refinery, Kuwait will become one of the largest producers of clean fuels in the Middle East,” said James King, Honeywell general manager, Kuwait. “Honeywell’s suite of proven technologies for the refining industry is well suited to support a quick and safe refinery start up, and efficient operations. We are pleased to have been selected for this important project.”

Honeywell has provided industry-leading technologies to KNPC’s refineries for about 30 years through its Process Solutions (HPS) business and has long-sustained a presence in Kuwait. As the main automation contractor for the new Al Zour refinery, Honeywell will supply Experion® PKS as the main control system for the refinery complex, as well as integrate all process automation systems throughout the site. Additionally, having HPS perform front-end engineering and design of the system will help drive consistent designs from other contractors throughout the entire project and help speed its completion.

“We are very excited to begin work on this new refinery, which will further position Kuwait as an industry leader not only in the Middle East, but on a global level,” said Mr. Khaled Al-Awadhi, New Refinery Project manager. “Honeywell’s technology and experience in process controls will enable the Al Zour refinery to effectively meet the energy demands of Kuwait and reduce overall emissions.”

The new refinery complex will help to meet domestic demand and export of ultra-low sulfur products such as fuel oil, diesel and kerosene, as well as petrochemical feedstocks.