Gas to Power

Côte d’Ivoire adds 180 MW to flagship gas-to-power plant in Abidjan

The Azito gas-to-power plant in Abidjan is currently undergoing expansion. Picture: GE.

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On Monday this week, Côte d’Ivoire added another 180 MW to its Azito gas-to-power complex in Yopougon, Abidjan. The facility has been under expansion since 2019 under the Azito 4 project, which includes the new 180 MW gas turbine inaugurated this week, and a 74 MW steam turbine.

Azito 4 represents an investment of some €330m and is expected to produce about 2 000 GWh every year upon completion. It follows several phases of expansion since the project was initially conceived in the late 1990s under a 24-year concession agreement.

The facility is equipped by GE turbines, including the new GT13E2 2012 MXL2 turbine commissioned this week, which is now the biggest one installed in the country.

Azito successfully monetizes domestic gas produced offshore Côte d'Ivoire by Foxtrot and national oil company PETRO-CI. Its conversion to a combined-cycle facility in 2015 notably helped in reducing carbon emissions by almost 450,000 tCO2e/year.

Details on Azito’s history, operational and sustainability performances are available in the “Projects” section within your Hawilti+ research terminal.

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Nigeria: FEED contract awarded for new 100,000 bpd refinery in Port Harcourt

Maire Tecnimont has just announced that its subsidiary Tecnimont has been awarded a new FEED contract by African Refineries Port Harcourt Limited (ARPHL) for a new 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery in Nigeria. The new plant is expected to be built inside the existing Port Harcourt Refinery complex, where Tecnimont is already rehabilitating the refinery there under a $1.5bn EPC contract. The FEED contract includes a feasibility study for the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF, or Biojet) based on NextChem technology, Tecnimont said. ARPHL is a consortium of Nigerian and foreign investors that won a bid to run and operate the deep conversion refinery under a PPP scheme, according to its website. ARPHL notably signed a 64-year lease with the NNPC Ltd for 45ha of land within the existing complex of the state-owned Port Harcourt Refinery. The plant is expected to be commissioned in 2025. Details on African refineries and upcoming projects can be found within the Hawilti+ research terminal and are analysed every quarter within our Quarterly Refineries Watch.

TechnipEnergies completes Senegal’s refinery expansion project

On June 29th, TechnipEnergies Country Director for Senegal, Franck Pliya, announced the holding of the last Steering Committee meeting of the ACATBS project at the SAR Refinery in Dakar. The contractor had been involved in a significant upgrade and expansion of the refinery over the past months, which culminated in a facility shutdown in Q1 this year to synchronise several new units. The ACATBS project (projet d’Augmentation de Capacité et d’Adaptation des unités pour le Traitement du Brut Sénégalais) notably targeted the expansion of the refinery’s capacity from 1.2m to 1.5m tonnes per year (tpy). It consisted of the installation of a pre-flash column to increase production capacity by 30%, and the extension of the reforming unit to enable the processing of domestic crude oil from the Sangomar offshore field, where first oil is expected in 2023. “Through this project, we have achieved 1.2m hours without accident, remained on budget, and managed to ensure an 80% participation from Senegalese companies with a local workforce of over 500 mobilised on site during the peak of the project,” Franck Pliya wrote.     SAR mostly imports crude oil from Nigeria (especially Erha and Bonny Light) before refining it for distribution in Senegal and the landlocked subregion, especially in Mali. Its facilities include distillation units, a catalytic reformer and a MEROX unit to treat kerosene. The facility was initially commissioned in 1963 and is owned at 46% by the state-owned national oil company PETROSEN. Full details on the African refining sector can be found in Hawilti’s Quarterly Refineries Watch, available within your Hawilti+ research terminal (plus.hawilti.com).