Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)

Engineering, design and maintenance company Shaw Group Incorporated (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), has been awarded two contracts by Iraq's Ministry of Oil. The firm's Energy and Chemicals Group will conduct feasibility studies and provide front-end engineering and design (FEED) services for two grassroot refineries. The FEED services to be provided by the firm encompass all the process units, utilities and offsite facilities for both refineries. Each refinery would have a design capacity of 150,000 barrels per day (BBL/d) and would be set up near the cities of Maissan in southern Iraq and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The refineries are being set up as part of the country's development program and are expected to reduce domestic fuel shortage as well as dependence on imports. The value of the contracts has not yet been disclosed but will be published as an unfilled order in Shaw's fourth quarter report for the 2009 fiscal year.

According to Lou Pucher, President of the Energy and Chemicals Group, the recently signed refinery contracts represent the first large-scale project for the group in Iraq.

In March 2009, the Shaw Group opened an office in Abu Dhabi to better serve the company's growing customer base in the Middle East. The group has been operating a pipe-fabrication facility in Bahrain since 1994.

The firm was already involved in various Middle Eastern projects when the new office was set up in Abu Dhabi. These included providing FEED services for the 200,000-ton-per-year grassroot acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plant being set up by Arabian Petrochemical Company (Petrokeyma) (Jubail, Saudi Arabia), implementing the engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) and commissioning processes for a 400,000-ton-per-year plant being developed by Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia).

Shaw is also providing detailed EPC management services for Petrokeyma's plant expansion project in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, Abu Dhabi Oil Refining Company (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates) purchased the license for Shaw's Residue Fluid Catalytic Cracking technology as part of the company's refinery expansion project at the Ruwais Industrial Complex in the United Arab Emirates.

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Tags: Global News , Oil and Gas