Abu Dhabi - The Ruwais Refinery.

ADNOC decided to build a second refinery in 1977, one year after the old Umm al-Nar plant was completed, because of rapid growth in demand for oil products. A contract was awarded that year to Snamprogetti to build the plant at Ruwais, 250 km east of Abu Dhabi and close to the Jebel Dhanna oil terminal, with a capacity of 120,000 b/d. Work was completed in early 1981 and the plant went on stream by June that year. In January 1995 the Supreme Petroleum Council (SPC), in charge of the entire petroleum sector, approved a project to raise the refinery's capacity to 535,000 b/d at a cost of up to $2 bn. ADNOC later decided to limit the refinery's expansion to 400,000 b/d, by adding two 140,000 b/d condensate splitters, which were only to cost the company about $800m. It decided to delay the installation of a 135,000 b/d crude oil distillation unit and a number of upgrading facilities that were to cost over $1.2 bn.

The contract for the two identical 140,000 b/d condensate units was awarded in early August 1997 to Snamprogetti on a turnkey basis. The first of the twin splitters came on stream in early June 2000. Train-2 came on stream in mid-September 2000. Both plants began full production on Nov. 20, 2000. The two splitters have the capacity to produce 50% full-range naphtha (almost 80% paraffinic), 30% jet fuel and kerosine, 15% gasoil, and 5% LPG and residue. The splitters have an 11,000 b/d LPG amine sweetening plant, two 46,500 b/d naphtha stabilisation units, and two 52,000 b/d kerosine sweetening units. Their support structures include 23 floating roof storage tanks, product blending units and shipping facilities. Asia, notably including Japan and South Korea, is the main market for the two splitters. The two trains' capacity has been raised by 20% under a $50-60m project for which Snamprogetti did the process study. Expansion was done through debottlenecking of the two units in 2005.

The 81,000 b/d ULG/LSGO plant on stream since mid-2005 at Ruwais includes two continuous catalytic converters each of 120,000 b/d, heavy/light naphtha hydrotreaters with a combined capacity of 31,700 b/d, a 15,000 b/d gas/oil hydrotreater, a sulphur plant and utilities. CBI Eastern Anstalt, a unit of Chicago Bridge & Iron of the US, built a related tankage system at the Ruwais refining complex. This was the first phase of Takreer's ULG/LSGO project, the second phase was built at Umm al-Nar (see above).

These green products are in line with a worldwide trend to market transport fuels with improved quality specifications. Commercial production and export of these fuels began during the third quarter of 2005. The green diesel has a much reduced sulphur content at 10 parts per million (ppm) by weight. Additional improvements in other qualities such as distillation boiling range, flow properties, cetane number and aromatics content were brought about through installation of new facilities.

In the UAE, about 10% of vehicles, mostly trucks and heavy equipment, use diesel. One Takreer executive was in 2005 quoted as saying: "If we can reduce the sulphur from diesel to the minimum with better refining technology, technical standards and law-enforcement, it would be better for all of us". Under a "National Environmental Strategy", sulphur emissions have been reduced to around 5,000 ppm. By end-2005 this had been reduced to 2,500 ppm; and by 2010, the federation's diesel's emissions will be cut to around 50 ppm. A technical committee in July 2004 finalised the specifications for low sulphur diesel.