Byco has completed Pakistan's largest oil refinery in Balochistan with a capacity of 120,000 barrels per day, which is expected to reduce the country's imports of oil products. The new refinery has been successfully pre-commissioned and tested. With addition to this Refinery in Byco Group, it has become the Largest refining Complex in the country.
The current share of petroleum production in Pakistan by Byco will increase from 11% to approximately 39% after its new Refinery is commissioned and brought into commercial operations. The new Refinery is the largest single Refinery of the country, with a rated refining capacity of 120,000 barrel per day, which according to UOP, the refining license and technology providers, can be further expanded in two stages up to 180,000 bpd. The new Refinery will enhance overall crude oil refining capacity in the country from an existing 12.25 to 18 million tons per year, and it is expected to produce about 1.6 million tons of Fuel Oil, 2.4 million tons of Diesel, 1.1 million tons of Gasoline and 0.8 million tons of LPG on an annual basis. These volumes are required for Pakistan's consistently rising energy needs, which will significantly assist the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources to keep indigenous supplies at pace with the Government's ambitious growth forecasts.
To set up the efforts for this 120,000 bpd Refinery, one of the initial steps taken by Technical Team was selecting the philosophy of fast tracking the Project. This entailed taking initiatives to perform many critical design activities in house. This helped in providing seamless flow of documents for Project execution, albeit with a risk of rework. By the grace of Almighty Allah, the whole project phase ended up having minimal rework, which is very uncommon in projects of such complexity and size. A more systematic and meticulous construction management approach was formulated by employing Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM / PERT) on level 3 schedules while developing more than 25,000 interconnected activities to achieve the completion target.
This is one of the largest Mechanical Complex on the Coastal area of Balochistan which involves huge engineering activities, ranging from Civil to Electrical & Mechanical.
1. 140,000 m3 of excavation
2. 6,000 m3 of PCC
3. 35,000 m3 of RCC
4. 150 metric tons of embedded Steel
5. 60 metric tons of anchor Bolts
6. 4,000 metric tons of Reinforcement Steel, which gives an idea of the magnitude of the project
B) The Electrical area required 360,000 meters of power cable
C) The Mechanical side of the project involved the following:
1. 20,000 metric tons of static & rotary equipment
2. 117,000 metric tons of piping
3. 1,600 metric tons of steel structure
D) Finally, on Instrumental side, 150,000 meters of cable was used for the project
Commissioning an Oil Refinery is the act of simultaneously taking a host of critical plants and preparing them for start-up and then turning them into a functioning Oil Refinery. Once the Refinery is up and running, it will operate twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, continuously converting Crude Oil into valuable energy and non-energy products. All of the utilities for the new Refinery are already in operation. Water is being extracted from Sea Water using a new Reverse Osmosis Unit imported from the USA, which is the largest such Plant in the Country. Steam is being generated in one of the three new sixty five ton per hour Boilers. Power is provided by ten of the fifteen new Generators. The Fire Water system is complete and Cooling Water is circulating through a new cooling tower.
The extra refined products from new Byco refinery will have two major impacts on the Country's economy. First, it will curtail the import of finished petroleum products, which will invariably result in saving foreign exchange and secondly, it will provide job opportunities and will help in reducing the burden on the Government.