Foster Wheeler won Statoil Mongstad feasibility study
The national oil company (NOC) Statoil ASA (Statoil) sanctioned a feasibility study contract to the Swiss-based engineering company Foster Wheeler to upgrade the Mongstad Refinery in Norway.
Norway is hosting two refineries, in Mongstad operated by Statoil and in Slagen owned by ExxonMobil.
Located on the Norwegian west coast closed to Bergen, while Slagen stands on the southwest coast near Oslo.
Because of the refinery, Mongstad ranks as the second largest port in Europe after Rotterdam for oil shipment.
Both refineries receive their crude oil from the Norwegian North Sea.
With a capacity of 12 million tons per year (t/y) or 240,000 barrels per day (b/d) of oil, the Mongstad refinery is twice bigger than Slagen that treats 6 million t/y or 120,000 b/d of crude
Built in 1970, the Mongstad refinery shares ownership between:
– Statoil 79% the operator
– Shell 21%
In 1989, Statoil and Shell proceeded to a major expansion in ramping up the Mongstad refinery from the original 6.5 million t/y to 10 million t/y of crude oil.
Then in 2011, the addition of a combined heat and power plant contributed to increase again the Mongstad capacities to the current 12 million t/y.
In the meantime Statoil and Shell proceeded regularly to refinery upgrades with the addition of desulphurisation units in 1996 and 2003 in order to meet last EU standards.
Constantly cautious to reduce the environmental footprint of the Mongstad refinery, Statoil and Shell have been studying a large carbon capture project.
But in front of the complexity and related risks of integrating the necessary processes for carbone capture in an existing refinery in operations, Statoil and Shell decided to stop it for now.
Statoil to add new vacuum distillation unit in Mongstad
Anyway, Statoil and Shell remain keen to maintain the Mongstad refinery at the state-of-art of the operating performances and to adjust its portfolio of refined products to the market demand in Norway, Europe and USA.
In this perspective Statoil is already planning the next upgrade of the Mongstad refinery and selected Foster Wheeler to carry out feasibility studies.
The purpose of this contract is to proceed to multiples simulations of high performances processes in order to identify the most efficient operating configuration to lead the next refinery upgrade.
With these simulated scenarios, Foster Wheeler is expected to provide Statoil and Shell with the corresponding costs estimates.
Through these simulations, Statoil is willing to cover:
– Crude oil flexibility as feedstock
– Increased diesel capacities
– New production of ultra-low sulfur diesel
For the next upgrade, Statoil and Shell are planning to add a new vacuum distillation unit and an new diesel hydrotreaters.
With this agenda, Statoil and Shell are expecting Foster Wheeler recommendations for the next Mongstad refinery upgrade on early 2014 in order to prepare the front end engineering and design (FEED) in following.