Air Products, the leading US LNG equipment-maker and industrial gases company, has completed the world’s largest industrial gas complex at Jazan in Saudi Arabia to provide gas to the Saudi Aramco refinery.
The Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania-based company built the plant under a joint venture with Saudi company ACWA Holding.
It will supply 75,000 metric tonnes per day of gases, including oxygen and nitrogen, to the Saudi Aramco facility.
Air Products industrial gases business is carried out alongside its LNG and equipment products such as LNG main cryogenic heat exchangers and its proprietary propane pre-cooled mixed refrigerant liquefaction process.
In addition to building and designing the Saudi industrial gas complex, Air Products owns 25 percent of the completed plant and ACWA Holding the remaining 75 percent.
“For the Air Products team members involved to complete this project with the extensive worker hours required, facing varied challenges, and to do so without a lost time injury is a truly exceptional milestone,” said Samir J. Serhan, Executive Vice President of Air Products.
“Going forward, when a prospective customer is interested in Air Products’ expertise, we can point to a map and say, let me tell you what we accomplished at Jazan,” stated Serhan.
The work on the Jazan project was carried out by the main Air Products engineering centres located in the UK, the US, China and India with the active engagement of other employees in Saudi Arabia.
“The now mechanically complete industrial gas complex is expected to be brought on stream in phases in 2019,” said the US company.
Air Products said the Jazan gases complex took around three years to complete and is significantly larger than anything built to date by the company.
“On top of that, there was the massive recruitment effort to bring the construction workforce and others to the remote location, train them, and have them understand our focus on safety,” added Serhan.
The Jazan project effort required the hiring of sub-contractors for almost all of the construction scope.
“At peak construction periods, a workforce of 6,000 people were at the site. The result was a multi-national team of people from over 30 countries filling the varied roles necessary for the project,” said Air Products.
