Dos Bocas refinery will produce at maximum capacity until October – El Sol de México

The Olmeca refinery in Dos Bocas Paraíso, Tabasco will be producing at full capacity by next October, 11 months ahead of the original plans of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). According to PTI Development Infrastructure, which is in charge of the work, an investment of 13 thousand 200 million dollars plus taxes was projected, that is, about 15 thousand 312 million dollars.

According to the data available in the reports of the Board of Directors of the oil company, for this month 17 thousand 500 million dollars have been exercised and an authorization had been made to increase the budget ceiling until reaching 18 billion. However, these reports are yet to be audited.

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The goal is that the two refining trains reach a total production for the fourth quarter of the year of 340,000 barrels per day, which will use Maya-type heavy oil from the Campeche Sound.

The refinery’s collection center is the port of Dos Bocas, which is ready to start passing crude. The pipeline is finished and in the testing process, shows the report to which El Sol de México had access.

According to sources from the state oil company, the first refining train will be up and running by the end of next August. In fact, the presidential visit to the new facilities is scheduled for August 29 to start up the first refining train. The original plan with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador was to celebrate the progress of more than 95 percent of the refinery on July 2, however, a week before, in a visit to the Veracruz facilities, the decision was made to attend the commissioning of the first half of the refinery.

The goal is that by next September, at least 86,000 barrels of gasoline and 61,000 barrels of diesel will begin in the first refining train. Currently, the sources say, the coking plants are already ready to start up and be able to operate without any problem.

A few weeks ago in the oil market it was insistently mentioned that Pemex was looking to buy two coking machines, even in the secondary market, because the ones that had been made for Dos Bocas had had a transport accident and ended up in the sea.

The sources explained that at this moment what is being done is to put diesel into the equipment of the Refining Train number one to take away all the humidity, this process will serve to prepare the first load of crude and all this will happen in a period of at least three weeks.

This same process will be carried out on the second train to prepare it for its commercial operation; the second will be finished in September.

RECORD TIME

The two refining trains will have been built in record time if it is taken into account that everything started in 2019 and although the idea was to operate commercially in September 2024, it will start earlier.

For train one, several problems had to be solved and that delayed its construction for at least a couple of months, however, by solving those errors and avoiding them in the other part of the installation, at least three weeks were saved in its construction.

The Dos Bocas refinery had calculated that the CFE was going to build an electric cogeneration plant for it. The agreement with the director of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett, was that the state-owned company would first invest in the substations required to meet the electricity demand and then build a cogeneration plant at its own expense and risk with its own resources, but realizing that it would not The CFE was doing nothing, Pemex made the decision that it be one of the contractors that already have someone to do it. This responsibility fell into the hands of Techint, which also has one of the construction packages to finish.

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This cogeneration plant is nearing completion and could be 100 percent by the end of the year, however, the challenge it faces is the availability of natural gas in the Tabasco area. The source explained that the three contractors are about to deliver the works.

Samsung Engineering has practically finished everything, Grupo ICA the same with the two refining trains, and Techint, which is responsible for the cogeneration plant. According to the available data, there are projects in the world similar to the Olmeca refinery, in Dos Bocas; one in Nigeria, Dangote Group; two in China from Shenghong Petrochemical and Petrochina; and one more from Kuwait, from the Kuwait Integrated Petrochemicals Industrial Company; and although all were scheduled to start operations from 2022, the reality is that so far none have done so.

2023-07-07 11:00:00
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