Furnace Fabrica bags $700 mn Yemen project

Mumbai-based engineering company Furnace Fabrica India (FFI) has bagged the contract to build a 45,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in Yemen worth of $700 million (over Rs 3,200 crore).

The company will look after the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of the project.

A company official confirmed the development about building a refinery in Ras Issa in Hodeidah on the Red Sea coast of Yemen. The project will be owned by a company set up by Yemeni and Saudi investors.

Ras Issa is home to a terminal which handles exports of crude oil pumped by pipeline from the Marib oilfield. Indian oil major Reliance Industries (RIL) is also involved in building a refinery in Ras Issa.

In this 60,000 bpd refinery project, RIL has 25 per cent stake while Yemen's Hood Oil Ltd is owning 50 per cent of the pie. The $450 million refinery of Hood and RIL is due to start up by the third quarter of 2007.

According to sources, "The first phase of the FFI project is expected to cost $200 million and will produce diesel, furnace oil, LPG, kerosene and naphtha. The construction work has already started and the refinery would be completed by June 2007."

The second stage to expand the refinery would involve an additional investment of $500 million.

The company had constructed three fired heaters and hydrogen reformer for Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) at Panipat refinery.

Apart from that, it had completed the petrochemical projects of Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd (IPCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) and Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals (MRPL).

In the chemicals and fertilisers segment, FFI had built gas-based sulphuric acid plants for Hindustan Zinc, Sterlite Industries and Binani Zinc.

It built sulphuric acid plants in Kuwait, Qatar and Zambia.