IRAN - Abadan.

The largest in the world until it was destroyed by Iraq, the Abadan refinery had a capacity of 635,000 b/d in 1980 and the complex was the site of important petrochemical plants. Reconstruction of its capacity has been increased steadily since the war ended in 1988. Its capacity now is 460,000 b/d but the refinery is grossly inefficient.

In mid-1998 NIOC offered four projects for the refinery to be built and funded by foreign companies on buy-back basis, so that the plant's capacity is raised to 600,000 b/d: modernising the central fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) built by Foster Wheeler in 1950 and raising its capacity from 40,000 to 60,000 b/d; building a 70,000 b/d vacuum distillation unit (VDU); building a 25,000 b/d visbreaker; and building four desalting units with a total capacity of 525,000 b/d.

NIORPDC modified the upgrading programme after it took over from NIOC. It split the central FCCU tender into phases, one for rehabilitation of the existing unit, to be followed by construction of a grassroots unit which would cost about $250m. The existing FCCU is grossly inefficient; it only operates at 15,000 b/d. Contractors shortlisted for the two phases more interest in building new units than in rehabilitation work and their terms for financing were not accepted by Tehran.

The Abadan refinery's reconstruction involved thousands of Iranians with no role for foreign firms. One of its distillation units was brought back on stream in April 1989 at the rate of 130,000 b/d to produce 63,000 b/d of fuel oil, 23,000 b/d of gasoil, 22,000 b/d of kerosine, 18,000 b/d of gasoline and 5,000 b/d of LPG. The lubricants unit was restored in Feb. 1990 with a capacity of 517,000 b/y, as against an original design capacity of 550,000 b/y. Another phase of reconstruction completed in April 1991 brought the second distillation unit on stream and raised the refinery's capacity to 260,000 b/d. But most of the new expansion involved topping units producing more heavy fuel oil than the local market required. By late 1993, the refinery could crack about 10% of its fuel oil output into low quality gasoline. Further work raised the capacity to 300,000 b/d in March 1994 and to 330,000 b/d in early March 1995.

An FCCU was installed in June 1994 which increased the refinery's output of high-sulphur distillates and cut its heavy fuel oil yield by 12% to 33% of the throughput. Since mid-1991, the refinery has had new and repaired units in addition to topping facilities, including a visbreaker brought back on stream in Sept. 1994, a vacuum distillation tower which started up in late 1991 and a 200,000 litre/d special solvents plant completed in early 1992. In expansion work to March 1998, the refinery got a third distillation unit.

The rebuilding of the Abadan plant by Iranians encouraged the Oil Ministry to use locals in other refineries. They were mobilised to complete work on the Bandar Abbas refinery.