Khaled Abu-Nasrah, President, KBR, Middle East Region spoke to Oil Review Middle East about the main opportunities for KBRs refining technologies.
Abu-Nasrah believes that the future opportunities in the region present KBR with a tremendous growth platform.
Process technology
"On the process technology side, KBR has played a leading role in many defining projects in the Middle East. We have provided technology to the region's leading NOCs in ammonia, ethylene, refining, and specialty chemicals like Phenol and Aniline. Several of our technologies are widely recognised as providing the lowest CAPEX on grassroots projects while ensuring the highest safety and reliability," he stated
Environmentally friendly technologies
KBR has had a long history in providing expert refining technologies and there is a growing push for 'environmentally friendly' technologies.
Abu-Nasrah explained: "Operating companies in the Middle East are paving the way for adopting environmentally friendly technologies and decreasing their carbon footprint as is evidenced by corporate-wide initiatives such as SABIC's 'Sustainability' initiative."
FCC technology
He added: "Throughout the region, we are seeing fertiliser and petrochemical producers placing greater emphasis on "energy conservation" and KBR is playing a leading role in providing process technology to achieve this. Independent sources have cited our ammonia technology as having the lowest energy consumption in the industry. Our FCC technology in refining has the lowest NOx emissions."
Abu-Nasrah feels that progressive operating companies in the region have realised that in the future, they will have an edge over their competitors if they are able to clearly demonstrate that their products are manufactured without impacting the environment or at least demonstrating they have taken steps to ensure the same.
ROSE technology
Abu-Nasrah discussed the importance of KBR's ROSE technology and its applications in the region.
"Our Residuum Oil Supercritical Extraction or ROSE technology is by far the industry's leading solvent deasphalting technology," he said.
Essentially, this technology allows refiners separate valuable components from the heavy (non-distillable) portions of a barrel of crude oil – the so called "bottom of the barrel" solution.
"Implementation of ROSE has many benefits from maximising yields on products such as gasoline and lube oils to allowing refineries to diversify into products such as road asphalt and anode-grade coke."
There are many examples of ROSE being implemented across the region last year. KBR was awarded a contract by Saudi Aramco Lubricating Oil Refining Co. (Luberef) to implement KBR's technology in Luberef's Yanbu Refinery Expansion Project in Saudi Arabia.
Propane Deasphalting Unit revamp
KBR was to provide technology licensing and basic engineering services to revamp and almost double the capacity of Luberef's existing Propane Deasphalting (PDA) Unit. The existing PDA unit, which is currently based on conventional SDA technology, will be converted to KBR's ROSE technology.
In addition to increasing production volumes, the PDA revamp will allow Luberef to increase the production of brightstock and by-products.
Emerging refining trends
Abu-Nasrah talked about trends emerging within the region's petrochemicals/refining sectors. "We see greater integration between refining and petrochemical operations particularly in light of competition for conventional feedstocks like natural gas and ethane."
He added: "Further, we see a much greater emphasis on development of downstream industries / clusters to add more value to basis chemicals within the GCC region – which will have a direct positive impact on regional job growth."
Incareasing productivity
In conclusion, Abu-Nasrah, discussed how KBR could help the productivity concerns in Middle Eastern refiners.
"We are already working with several clients to optimise their existing operations to maximize productivity and profitability through our various technologies. As I mentioned earlier, we are using our ROSE technology to help refiners maximize yields and thereby directly impact their margins."
"We are also working with refiners to explore ways to convert what are ordinarily considered "waste streams" into high value products like propylene using a proprietary technology called Superflex. Our refining experts call this "molecule management" – i.e. how can we extract the maximum value out of each molecule of crude oil."
