New UK refinery?
1 Sep 2011
GE Oil & Gas is planning to build a new oil refinery on Teesside in the north east of England, according to a Reuters report. The US major is working on a feasibility study for the project with UK firm Penergis, said the news agency quoting a spokesman for GE Oil and Gas.
The reported project appears to be linked to a pre-planning application for a 200-250MW gas-fired power station and harbour facilities submitted by developer Tees Refining to the UK’s Infrastructure Planning Commission.
The IPC said it understood from the applicant that “these facilities are proposed to be developed in connection with a heavy oil processing plant”. It added that the proposed harbour facilities would be capable of handling the embarkation or disembarkation of large cargo ships carrying crude oil some11 million tonnes of material per year.
Back in 2007, Sonhoe Development unveiled plans to build a new heavy oil upgrader on its planned £2-billion refinery project in Teesside.
These proposals failed to get off the drawing board, however, much to the disappointment of many in the North East process industries.
GE Oil & Gas had been selected by Sonhoe as a “supplier of choice” for a new heavy oil upgrader, providing reactors, centrifugal and reciprocating compressors, centrifugal pumps and air coolers for the facility under a $200-million contract.
At the time, GE Oil & Gas said the new plant would upgrade low-quality heavy oil into premium-quality, ultra-low sulphur diesel, kerosene and petrochemical naphtha in the 200,000bbl/day (barrels/day) facility scheduled to come on stream by 2014.
The facility was to have featured a 110,000bbl/day hydro-cracking capability and a gasification complex with a capacity to produce more than 500 tonnes a day of hydrogen, and more than 240,000 therms a day of synthetic gas.
