Engineering, procurement and construction group KBR has been awarded a significant project management consultancy (PMC) Contract for the Heydar Aliyev Baku oil refinery modernization project in Azerbaijan.
Under the contract, KBR will modernise the 6 Mt/year Heydar Aliyev refinery in Baku to meet Euro 5 standards for all products and will increase the refinery capacity by 25% to 7.5 Mt/year; the catalytic cracking unit capacity will be increased from 2 to 2.5 Mt/year. The US$1bn modernisation project is expected to be completed by late 2018.
This contract follows the creation of the SOCAR-KBR LLC joint venture with national oil company SOCAR in mid-2015; the joint venture is aimed to provide design, engineering, technical, consultancy, procurement, construction supervision and project management services for all brownfield and greenfield projects across the upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas sectors, in the Azerbaijan–Georgia–Turkey region.