A subsidiary of Foster Wheeler Ltd’s Global Engineering and Construction Group has secured contracts from OMV Petrom SA (Bucharest, Romania) as part of OMV Petrom’s modernization of the Petrobrazi refinery. The refinery is situated near the city of Ploiesti, in southeastern Romania. OMV Petrom is 51% owned by OMV AG (Vienna, Austria). According to the contract, Foster Wheeler will provide front-end engineering design (FEED) services for modernization of the atmospheric and vacuum distillation unit at the refinery. The contract covers engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) of the crude distillation unit. Foster Wheeler has also secured a FEED contract for restoring a delayed coking unit, as well as an EPCM contract for building a new amine-treating facility. OMV Petrom revived the project after announcing in February 2009 that it was delaying the modernization of the Petrobrazi refinery until 2012 because of the global financial crisis and dip in crude oil prices. The company plans to invest USD 1 billion between 2010 and 2014 for upgrading the refinery. The capacity of the atmospheric and vacuum distillation units will be increased from 4.5 million tons per year to 6 million tons per year. The modernization project also involves retooling other units, revamping the distribution network, securing investments to curb emissions of environmentally hazardous SO2 and NOx gases, and reorganizing the utilities systems to improve their efficiencies. In addition, a new hydrocracker unit and a new hydrogen plant will be constructed.
