Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) has awarded the US’ Chevron Lummus Global a $100m-plus contract to carry out design and engineering work on its Sitra refinery.

The company, a joint venture between the US’ CB&I Lummus and Chevron, will also license its technologies for residue hydrocracking and vacuum gasoil hydrocracking units as part of the refinery’s modernisation programme.

When fully installed and operational, the technology will produce clean transportation fuels and lubricant base oils, and will provide greater depth of conversion for heavier oil grades.

The award comes a month after Bapco awarded France’s Technip a $55m front-end engineering and design (feed) contract for the refinery’s residue conversion unit (RCU).

Bapco’s modernisation programme aims to rehabilitate the refinery as well as increase capacity from 267,000 barrels a day (b/d) to 360,000 b/d. The budget for the scheme could be as high as $9bn. The proposed packages are likely to be:

• Offsites and utilities;
• Crude unit and associated facilities;
• Hydrocracker and associated units;
• Residue conversion project.

About 220,000 b/d of oil is currently provided by Saudi state oil company Saudi Aramco, with 40,000 b/d coming from Bahrain’s own reserves. The exact increase in capacity that the refinery’s rehabilitation and expansion will provide has not been released. Industry sources told MEED in June that the figure should be about 100,000 b/d.

The vast majority of the additional capacity will be middle distillates or diesel fuel.