Top Projects Started

Top 1: BP Whiting Refinery Modernization

Cost: $3.8 Billion

The 119-year-old BP Whiting Refinery in Northwest Indiana gets crude from Canada, the southwest U.S. and foreign and offshore sources.

BP plans to increase the share of Canadian crude it receives from 30% to up to 80% or 90%. The BP Whiting Modernization Project is preparing the plant to handle that additional crude, which comes from Canada’s Oil Sands region via an Enbridge pipeline from Alberta to Illinois.

“Heavy crude oil contains more sulfur and other sediments,” says Scott Dean, spokesperson for BP. “It requires a more rigorous process, a significant increase in hydro treating and coking.”

The project includes the construction of a coker, crude distillation unit, gas oil hydro treater, new sulfur recovery facilities and environmental improvements, such as modernized water treatment facilities.

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Comprehensive Project Nearly everything at the 1,400-acre plant is being replaced, renovated or built new.

“It’s a very large, complex, multi-year project,” Dean says. “We’re bringing modules in and installing them while the refinery continues to operate. Our top priority is safety.”

By the project’s completion in 2012, overall air emissions from the plant are expected to be down 75% from 2001, according to Dean.

Production will also increase significantly. The refinery will process an additional 260,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude, and it will have the capacity to produce an additional 1.7 million gallons of gasoline per day.

About 1,000 construction workers were on the job in early 2009, and that number will reach 2,000 before 2010.

The program manager is Fluor Corp., and the contractors are Foster Wheeler USA Corp., Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and Praxair.

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