Duqm Refinery looking at further expansion

Following an increase in its processing capacity, Duqm Refinery is now looking at further expansion projects at the $9 billion refinery project located in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm (SEZAD) on Oman’s southeast coast. The refinery, which now has an expanded capacity of 255,000 bbl/d, is run by OQ8, a joint venture between Kuwait Petroleum International (KPI) and Oman’s OQ Group. Speaking to local media, CEO Abdulla Al Ajmi said that OQ8 has now begun front end engineering design on a reformer unit to upgrade naphtha into high-octane gasoline components such as reformate, a critical step in producing finished, specification-grade fuels. In addition to the proposed reformer unit, Duqm Refinery is also exploring opportunities to enhance value creation from its refining by-products, notably sulphur and coke.

Al Ajmi said: “Other opportunities include sulphur and coke, and we have an MoU with a cement plant in Duqm that plans to use our coke by 2028. We are always on the lookout for projects that help us extract value from our outputs and by-products and contribute to the industrial ecosystem.”

Duqm’s sulphur unit includes three IPCO SG20 drum granulation units, with two operating at any given time. The units have a design capacity of 800 t/d each, but are currently run at 450 t/d to meet the refinery’s daily production need of 900 t/d. This has been a major boost to Oman’s sulphur production, which elsewhere runs at around 240 t/d, recovered primarily from gas processing operations at Petroleum Development Oman facilities, including Jebel Khuff and Taysir.