MOSCOW (MRC) -- South African Petroleum Refineries (Pty.) Ltd. (SAPREF), a 50-50 joint venture of Shell Refining SA and BP Southern Africa, has let a contract to KBR Inc. to provide technology for an upgrade of the 33,000-b/d FCC unit at its 180,000-b/d refinery in Durban, South Africa, said Ogj.
As part of the contract, KBR will license its Catalyst Regeneration technology as well as deliver basic engineering, detailed engineering, and proprietary equipment for the FCC regenerator project, which will enable SAPREF to improve the unit’s reliability and integrity by optimizing catalyst and air distribution, the service provider said.
KBR disclosed neither a value of the contract nor a timeframe for its work on the project.
While SAPREF itself has not revealed details on the proposed FCC regeneration project, BP Southern Africa said it planned to continue investing in upgrading SAPREF to ensure the refinery can meet domestic consumer demands for low-sulfur fuel, according to the company’s website.
In its most recent major maintenance shutdown, executed in 2019, SAPREF completed two upgrading projects at Durban to enable production of a low-sulfur fuel oil and low-sulfur diesel, the latter of which included installation of a new reactor in one of the plant’s diesel hydrodesulfurizing units, the operator said in its 2019 annual sustainability report.
As MRC informed earlier, Royal Dutch Shell Plc restarted the small crude distillation unit (CDU) on 2 April at its 318,000-bpd joint-venture Deer Park, Texas, refinery. The 70,000-bpd DU-1 CDU was shut on Feb 14 by a pump seal failure. All other units were shut the following day by severe cold weather. DU-1 is the last unit shut in February to restart at the refinery.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 241,030 tonnes in January 2021 versus 217,890 tonnes a year earlier. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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