Sustaining the crude to wealth saga
Long the jewel in the crown of Oman’s multibillion dollar refining and petrochemicals industry, Orpic is set to retain its pre-eminence as the nation’s flagship refiner thanks to a planned major expansion of its Sohar complex.
T
here is no underestimating the pivotal role that Orpic – Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company – plays in keeping the wheels of the Omani economy literally in motion.
Besides meeting almost all of the country’s requirement of motor fuels, jet fuel and other refined products, the company’s aromatics and polypropylene plants are an important source of chemical feedstock for Oman and the wider world. Additionally, exports from its refining and petrochemical units generate valuable foreign currency earnings. Indeed, few if any Omani industrial schemes can match Orpic’s contributions – in both scope and scale – to the national economy. Now, three years since it was formally established as the new face of the country’s refining and related petrochemical industry, Orpic is poised for a further spell of ambitious growth. The state-owned company plans to invest in excess of $1.5 billion in a major expansion of its refinery plant at Sohar, designed not only to boost the output of fuels, but also enhance the quality of its chemical by-products. In addition to securing the country’s escalating fuel needs over the long term, the expansion is also expected to provide new impetus to downstream projects in and around the industrial port.
42 Port of Sohar 2013
Orpic
Created from the integration of three companies – Oman Refineries and Petrochemicals Company LLC (ORPC), Aromatics Oman LLC (AOL) and Oman Polypropylene (OPP) – Orpic is one of Oman’s largest companies and also one of the fastest growing businesses in the Middle East’s oil industry. Its principal shareholders are the Omani government and Oman Oil Company SAOC, the wholly government owned energy investment vehicle. Orpic oversees an integrated complex essentially made up of four distinct plants operating at two different locations – Mina Al Fahal (Muscat) and Sohar. The two sites are linked by a 266-kilometre pipeline that delivers long residue as feedstock from the Mina Al Fahal Refinery to the Sohar site. The feedstock, which is blended with Omani crude, is then processed by Orpic’s Sohar Refinery plant to create a range of fuels, naphtha and propylene. Together, the two refineries have a production capacity of 222,000 barrels of crude oil per day – 116,000 b/d at Sohar and the balance made up by Mina Al Fahal. The crude oil is processed into liquid petroleum gas (LPG), regular / premium gasoline, kerosene / jet A-1 fuel, gas oil (diesel), bunker fuel oil, low sulphur gas oil and other refined products. Also produced