Bahrain's $7bn Bapco modernisation programme (BMP) is expected to boost total throughput at the Sitra refinery to 400,000 barrels a day (b/d) of oil, 20,000 b/d more than the design’s original nameplate capacity.

This will increase the refinery’s capacity by nearly 50 per cent compared to the existing 267,000 b/d.

The decision to push to operate the refinery above the original design capacity was made after completing readiness assessments, Mark Thompson, the chief executive of Bahrain’s state energy conglomerate Nogaholding, told MEED on the sidelines of the International Energy Week conference in London.

“The original design capacity was 380,000 barrels a day, but we are already pushing for 400,000 barrels of oil a day,” he said.

“As we have been looking at it, and doing our readiness assessments, it has become clear that there is room in the design to push it a little bit more.”

Thompson says that the new units at the Sitra refinery will be operational and the facility will be actively processing 400,000 b/d before the end of 2024.

He said: “We will be starting to commission some of the utility packages this summer and we are really looking to try and introduce crude as early as this year but, of course, it is a very complex multi-unit process.

“There are seven units in a row that we have to start up, from the crude unit forward.

“We do expect, even if we are very generous with time, it will be well into 2024 until we get to full capacity.”

Thompson said that the BMP represented a total investment of $7bn.

Refinery modernisation

The Sitra refinery is 90 years old and has crude units on the front end that are 75 years old and still operational.

The BMP project has been delayed several times in recent years and was previously expected to be completed in 2022.

The BMP will increase the complexity of the Sitra refinery to 7.1 on the Nelson complexity index (NCI).

The NCI is a measure to compare the secondary conversion capacity of a petroleum refinery with the primary distillation capacity.

The index provides an easy metric for quantifying and ranking the complexity of various refineries and units. The Sitra refinery is currently rated 6.3 on the NCI.

The BMP will also introduce further depth of conversion and upgrading of heavy oil.

The scope of the BMP originally included:

• Construction of two crude distillation units with a 225,000 b/d capacity
• Construction of two vacuum units with a 100,000 b/d capacity
• Construction of two vacuum gas oil (VGO) hydrocracking units with a 58,000 b/d capacity
• Construction of two diesel hydrotreating units with a 50,000 b/d capacity
• Construction of a residue hydrocracking unit with a 65,000 b/d capacity
• Construction of a tail gas treatment unit
• Construction of a sour water stripper unit
• Construction of an amine recovery unit
• Construction of a bulk acid gas removal unit
• Construction of two hydrogen plants, each with a 125 million standard cubic feet a day (scf/d) capacity
• Construction of three sulphur recovery units with a 250 metric tonnes a day capacity
• Construction of two saturated gas plants, each with a capacity of 30 million scf/d
• Installation of safety and security systems

US oil company Chevron is acting as a consultant on the Sitra expansion project while the project management consultant is Australia’s Worley Parsons.

France’s Tecnip and US-based Bechtel undertook the front-end engineering and design for the project.

The main engineering, procurement and construction contract was awarded in November 2017 to a joint venture of South Korea’s Samsung Engineering, Technip and Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas.