QP, Shell award FEED to Fluor for Al-Karaana petrochemicals project
Qatar Petroleum (QP) and Shell have awarded the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for their Al-Karaana petrochemicals venture Ras Laffan Industrial City to Fluor, the companies said on Thursday.
"The focus of the project team is on the delivery of a quality FEED that will be a major step towards successfully delivering this project which is an important part of our overall petrochemical development plan," said Mohammed Nasser Al-Hajri, chairman of the project's executive committee and also QP’s downstream director.
"We are delighted to have awarded the integrated FEED contract to Fluor, a world-class engineering company with a proven track record and expect Fluor to deliver FEED work of the highest quality and standards.”
This is an important milestone for the project, as it completes the full scope and definition for development of the world-scale facility, according to QP and Shell officials.
The scope under consideration for the Al-Karaana project includes a world-scale steam cracker, with feedstock coming from natural gas projects in Qatar; a 1.5 million tpy mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) plant using Shell’s proprietary OMEGA technology; a 300,000 tpy linear alpha olefin unit using Shell's proprietary Higher Olefins Process; and a 250,000 tpy oxo-alcohols unit.
"The Al-Karaana petrochemicals complex project has been envisioned to further boost Qatar’s rapidly growing stature in the global petrochemicals industry," said Dr. Mohammed bin Saleh Al-Sada, Qatar’s energy minister and Industry and managing director of QP.
Graham van’t Hoff, executive vice president for Shell Chemicals, said he was delighted with the development milestone.
“The proposed Al-Karaana project underlines Shell’s growth aspirations in the Middle East, and our contribution towards supporting Qatar’s strategy to diversify its energy industry and produce cost-competitive products," he said.
Qatar Petroleum will hold an 80% stake in the Al-Karaana project and Shell the remaining 20%. The companies signed a heads of agreement on their proposed complex in December 2011. It is estimated to cost $6.4 billion.
“The positive development of the Al-Karaana project clearly indicates the depth of our partnership with the State of Qatar," said Wael Sawan, managing director of Qatar Shell. "We are confident the project will help to support the country’s energy diversification strategy.”
The companies also unveiled their logo for the Al-Karaana project, which can be seen above. The logo consists of two alphabetical letters -- “k” and “kaf” -- which are written in both Arabic and English and combined together to form a drop.
The drop represents the geographic name “Al-Karaana”, which refers to a water well, as well as the liquid products that the petrochemicals complex will eventually produce.
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