Kuwait's al-Zour refinery starts commercial operations

Market: Crude oil, Oil products
06/11/22

Commercial operations have started at the first phase of Kuwait's 615,000 b/d al-Zour refinery, project operator Kipic said today.

The refinery is "a vital outlet for the disposal of heavy Kuwaiti oil and provides refined products for export in global markets with standard specifications", acting Kipic chief executive Waleed al Bader told state news agency Kuna.

Al-Zour will expand Kuwait's refining capacity to 1.415mn b/d from around 800,000 b/d when it reaches full capacity in 2023.

The project has faced repeated setbacks, first because of technical and logistical issues with contractors and more recently because of issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Kuwait had aimed to begin commissioning al-Zour in mid-2019 and have it fully operational by 2020.

The refinery has been designed to process mostly heavy crudes, including from the Lower Fars project in northeast Kuwait. It will boost the country's middle distillate output and will produce low-sulphur fuel oil, mainly for local power plants, and naphtha feedstock for petrochemical plants.

US engineering company Fluor, one of the companies working on the project, has said al-Zour will have capacity to process 615,000 b/d of light Kuwaiti crude or 535,000 b/d of heavy grades.

By Elshan Aliyev

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