Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco) has set the timeline for the $6.5bn rehabilitation and expansion at its refinery complex at Sitra in the kingdom.

The full rehabilitation will add about 100,000 barrels a day (b/d) of refined products and the complex will also produce petrochemicals, probably olefins after work is completed.

Technology selection is expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter of 2012 and the front-end engineering and design (feed) tender being made available by first quarter of 2013 at the latest.

“This is going to be a massive contract for the winning engineering consultancy, because the feed is expected to last for 18 months and be worth up to 2.5 million man-hours,” says a contracting source familiar with the project. “It will be one of the largest downstream brownfield developments ever attempted in the region and the amount of engineering required to make it all work is massive.”

The initial plan by Bapco was to push production up to 500,000-600,000 b/d, but this was considered unviable at the Sitre site. A compromise of adding 100,000 b/d plus petrochemicals means that it can be feasible without having to completely rebuild a lot of the current facilities.

However, the $6.5bn budget has also increased dramatically from the $2bn figure mooted in 2011 because of the highly technical nature of the work, which involves merging new equipment with the older facilities already in place.

“Bapco will want to lose as little production from the refinery as possible, while the work is being carried out,” says the source. “This makes total sense because even a month-long shutdown at a 250,000 b/d facility would equate to 7.5 million barrels of refined products, but trying to incorporate new equipment and capacity simultaneously will be very challenging and this is reflected in the budget.”

The Sitra refinery rehabilitation and expansion is the first major project Bapco is moving forward with after the Arab unrest that put many Bahraini projects on hold. A $1bn liquefied natural gas receiving terminal is currently on hold in the kingdom.