Honeywell wins Middle East’s largest refinery

Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) today confirmed it had hired the firm to provide the Integrated Control and Safety System (ICSS) for its new 615,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) Al Zour refinery complex to be built in southern Kuwait. Saudi Aramco’s 550,000 bpd Ras Tanura complex in Saudi Arabia is currently the largest refinery in the region.

Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) will also provide the front-end engineering design (FEED) for the Al Zour complex.

This will be Kuwait’s fourth refinery and represents a huge jump in output: the total capacity of Kuwait’s three current refineries is 930,000 bpd.

Kuwait will become one of the largest producers of clean fuels in the Middle East

Honeywell’s James King

“With this new refinery, Kuwait will become one of the largest producers of clean fuels in the Middle East,” said Honeywell general manager for Kuwait James King.

“Honeywell’s suite of proven technologies for the refining industry is well suited to support a quick and safe refinery start up, and efficient operations.”

Honeywell has a long history of working with KNPC, prvoding solutions to its refineries for about 30 years. As the main automation contractor for the new Al Zour refinery, Honeywell will supply Experion PKS as the main control system for the refinery complex, as well as integrate all process automation systems throughout the site.

Additionally, Honeywell claims that having HPS perform the FEED of the system will help drive consistent designs from other contractors throughout the entire project and help speed its completion.

The new refinery complex will help to meet domestic demand and export of ultra-low sulfur products such as fuel oil, diesel and kerosene, as well as petrochemical feedstocks.