Enoc appoints adviser for refinery funding

06 June 2016

Adviser will help coordinate finance for $1bn Jebel Ali refinery expansion project

Dubai’s government-owned Emirates National Oil Company (Enoc) has appointed Deutsche Bank as global export credit agency (ECA) financing coordinator for a $1bn refinery expansion in the emirate.

The bank is expected to send out teasers with initial terms to ECAs soon, according to sources aware of the matter. It is, however, not clear what the ECA component of the total financing required for Dubai’s biggest refining unit will be, the sources added.

A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined to comment when contacted by MEED. An Enoc spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.

Enoc raised a $1.5bn term debt syndicated facility from local, regional and international banks in June last year. The general corporate purpose syndicated debt in US dollars and Emirati dirhams had a nine-year term. It was a mixture of conventional and Islamic financing to support Enoc’s expansion strategy, which was fully underwritten by the local Emirates NBDCommercial Bank of DubaiDubai Islamic BankMashreq bankNoor Bank and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, as well as UK-based Standard Chartered. Another 14 local and regional lenders participated in the oversubscribed syndication.

Enoc, has already received commercial bids from several international companies for the contract to expand its Jebel Ali condensate refinery, sources familiar with the project told MEED on 15 May.

Engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract prices were submitted on 5 May for the brownfield project, which will add 20,000 barrels a day (b/d) to the refinery’s existing capacity of 120,000 b/d to help meet rising domestic fuel demand.

Several companies submitted commercial EPC bids for the project, including South Korea’s Samsung Engineering and France-based Technip.

Technical EPC bids were submitted in January. The companies vying for the tender at the technical bid phase are thought to include:

Enoc is expected to award the EPC contract in the third quarter of 2016, after assessing the commercial bids, MEED reported earlier.

The Jebel Ali refinery currently has two trains of condensate and Enoc plans to add two new processing units – jet and diesel hydrotreaters, and an isomerisation unit – that will lead to the production of Euro V-grade products such as high-octane gasoline, low-sulphur jet fuel and ultra-low sulphur diesel.

The front-end engineering and design (feed) study has been completed by US-based KBR, which won the contract in March 2014.

Established in 1999, the Jebel Ali refinery processes condensate to produce refined products such as naphtha, jet fuel, reformate, diesel oil, fuel oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for local and export markets.

Stay informed when you are on the move

All MEED subscribers have free access to the MEED app. Download it today, available on Apple and Android devices

A MEED Subscription...

Subscribe or upgrade your current MEED.com package to support your strategic planning with the MENA region’s best source of business information. Proceed to our online shop below to find out more about the features in each package.