Bahrain’s King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa has commissioned the estimated $7bn Bapco Modernisation Programme (BMP), which will increase the kingdom’s crude oil refining potential from 267,000 barrels a day (b/d) to 400,000 b/d.

The inauguration ceremony took place on 18 December. Along with King Hamad, the ceremony was attended by Salman Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s crown prince and prime minister, Sheikh Nasser Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, chairman of the board of directors of Bapco Energies, the leadership team at Bapco Energies, and other senior executives from the oil and gas industry.

The BMP is central to Bahrain’s Vision 2030 economic development strategy, and is crucial to boosting Bapco Energies’ long-term downstream oil potential.

Bapco Energies, previously Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco), awarded the main $4.2bn contract to perform engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) works on the BMP to a consortium led by France’s Technip Energies and including Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas and South Korea’s Samsung E&A in February 2018.

Technip Energies also performed the project’s front-end engineering and design work. US oil and gas producer Chevron acted as a consultant on the BMP, while Australia-based Worley was the project management consultant.

The project execution directorate was based in Rome, with operating centres in Madrid, Seoul and Bahrain. The overall project was managed from the Bahrain operating centre.

BMP objective

The core objective of the BMP was to upgrade the Sitra refinery – Bahrain’s only oil refining asset – which is 90 years old and has crude refining units within its battery limits that are 75 years old.

One of the key units to be built as part of the BMP was a residual hydrocracking unit (RHCU) powered by technology licensed from US-based Chevron Lummus Global. The BMP team has built a two-train RHCU with a capacity of 65,000 b/d.

The Sitra refinery includes seven crude distillation and vacuum distillation units as part of the BMP. This new 225,000 b/d integrated crude and vacuum unit replaced CDUs 1, 2 and 3 and VDUs 1 and 3, which had served Bapco Energies for over 80 years.

Key units installed at the Sitra refinery under the BMP include:

• Two crude distillation units with a 225,000 b/d capacity
• Two VDUs with a 100,000 b/d capacity
• Two vacuum gas oil (VGO) hydrocracking units with a 58,000 b/d capacity
• Two diesel hydrotreating units with a 50,000 b/d capacity
• A residual hydrocracking unit with a 65,000 b/d capacity
• Tail gas treatment unit
• Sour water stripper unit
• Amine recovery unit
• Bulk acid gas removal unit
• Two hydrogen plants, each with a 125 million standard cubic feet a day (scf/d) capacity
• Three sulphur recovery units with a 250 metric tonnes a day capacity
• Two saturated gas plants, each with a capacity of 30 million scf/d
• Safety and security systems.

In March this year, Bapco Energies brought French energy major TotalEnergies on board to support the completion of the project.

The BMP was originally expected to reach mechanical completion in 2023, with operations set to begin in 2024.