Five licensing agreements awarded toward upgrading Ras Tanura Refinery into a full-conversion refinery

Aramco has awarded five licensing agreements toward upgrading its Ras Tanura Refinery (RTR) into a full-conversion refinery that can convert lower-value residue streams into more valuable products.

Following the completion of the ongoing RTR Clean Fuels Project and Residue Project, the refinery will minimize fuel oil production and become a full-conversion refinery.

The Residue Upgrade – RTR Project will design, procure, install, and commission a Residue Upgrader Complex at RTR comprising a high lift solvent deasphalting unit, vacuum gas oil hydrocracking unit, kerosene treating unit together with a number of support process units such as sulfur recovery, hydrogen manufacturing, utilities and offsites, to meet project objectives. 

The Refining and NGL Projects Department conducted a newly established contractor-readiness assessment in collaboration with other company organizations to ensure the project could be delivered safely and efficiently with high quality.

Working with Aramco's Project Management Team (PMT) and contractors, multidiscipline teams visited RTR to survey plot space, interconnecting piping, control rooms and substations. The team concluded the visits by capturing existing site conditions and identifying potential constraints.

Licensing works

The project awarded three out-of-Kingdom agreements to Honeywell-UOP for:

• Basic engineering design development of 75,000 barrels per day (bpd) hydrocracking unit
• 32,000 high left solvent deasphalting unit
• 30,000 kerosene treating unit.

The project also awarded three in-Kingdom technology transfer agreements to Honeywell-UOP to set the terms and conditions associated with the units' performance and quality guarantees.

The project awarded similar agreements to Shell Global Solutions International B.V. for the development of a sulfur recovery unit with 99.9% sulfur recovery rate while ensuring compliance with the latest emission regulations of 50 parts per million SO² content. Similarly, licensing agreements for a  100 million standard cubic feet per day hydrogen manufacturing unit were awarded to Technip Benelux B.V. comprising steam methane reformer and pressure swing absorbers with hydrogen production purity level of 99.9%.

Plans toward digitalization

Striving to promote new technologies and smart project management, the project team deployed an in-house developed Enterprise Project Management Solution to streamline the project's communications, reviews, reporting, etc.

A dedicated technology and digital transformation specialist was also deployed to ensure successful deployments. 

Working with Aramco's Project Management Digital Transformation and its Technology Execution teams, the project has identified a number of digital capabilities and technology solutions that can be explored, in addition to scouting the market for new best-in-class solutions to improve the project's execution, quality, cost, schedule, and digital maturity level.