KBR Awarded Project Management Contract for Sonangol’s New Lobito Refinery Project

KBR announced today it has been awarded a project management contract by Sonangol for the design and construction of a new 200,000bpd refinery in Lobito, Angola.

Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide services encompassing the project management of engineering, procurement and construction phase execution. The Lobito Refinery Project is one of the most significant energy infrastructure projects in the region and will contribute to Angola’s energy independence. The project will also contribute to significant job creation and economic development of this region. Upon completing the Lobito Refinery Project, Angola is expected to have a 200% increase in the capacity to produce fuel products within the country in an efficient and sustainably improved approach.

This award further extends the more than twenty-year long partnership between KBR and Sonangol in the development of essential natural resources in Angola. KBR completed the FEED phase of the project earlier in 2023, providing a cost competitive design that met Sonangol’s business objectives while meeting the advanced emission standards required in the industry. In line with our strategy in energy transition to provide more environmentally friendly solutions, KBR’s FEED design also meets 2030 African and European Product Specifications with river water consumption and waste-water treatment requirements reduced by 30% as a result of KBR’s innovation in the refinery’s cooling system design.

“We are excited to be a part of this important project and to continue to grow and maintain a substantial presence in the region,” said Jay Ibrahim, President, Sustainable Technology Solutions. “This win is indicative of KBR’s strategic commitment to offer differentiated technical services that support Angola’s sustainable development goals.”

For more than 100 years, KBR has provided holistic and value-added solutions across the entire asset life cycle. Our leading experts have helped design and deliver world-class refinery and petrochemical plants across the globe.

bp wants to reposition its refinery in Gelsenkirchen for the future

With its strategy for the German market, bp also wants to drive forward its transformation into an integrated energy company. The refinery in Gelsenkirchen is an important component of this project. By the end of the decade, bp plans to gradually renovate the site so that it can follow the path of the energy transition and exploit its potential.

Currently, our refinery site in Gelsenkirchen is not competitive. We are too complex and – not only because of this – burdened with structurally too high costs. In order to be able to take advantage of the opportunities that arise for our location from the energy transition, we have to change today. We want to give Gelsenkirchen a perspective and greater potential for its contributions to the energy transition.

Arno Appel, head of the refinery in Gelsenkirchen


Refinery: Perspectives through Change and Adaptation

• In order to make the refineries fit for the future, it is necessary to massively reduce the complexity of the site and to shut down plant components for which capacity utilization is expected to decline in the future – with petrochemical production remaining a core area.
• For this reason, as a first step, five plants at the Horst and Scholven plants are to be decommissioned as planned from 2025. This could lead to a planned and controlled reduction of the total production capacity – currently around twelve million tonnes of crude oil per year – to around eight million tonnes at the site.
• With these measures, the site could also reduce its Scope 1 emissions by up to one half a million tons of CO2 per year.
• In addition, subject to appropriate approvals, bp plans to enable the production of lower-emission fuels through co-processing at the hydrocracker plant at the Gelsenkirchen-Scholven site, in order to produce, among other things, more sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).1
• Another perspective for future steps towards the production of more sustainable products is the possibility of establishing a circular economy network at the refinery for its petrochemical plants together with a partner. Only recently, the city council of Gelsenkirchen created the basic prerequisite for this by adapting the development plan accordingly.

The planned focus of the refinery on the future will also have an impact on the organization of work on site. Arno Appel says: "The tasks on site will change in the course of our transformation. We are determined to take as many colleagues as possible with us on this journey. However, it is also true that there will be fewer jobs overall in the refinery of the future in the future. In order to make this change as fair and socially acceptable as possible, we want to start negotiations with the employee representatives as soon as possible."

About the Gelsenkirchen location:
With around 2,000 employees and 160 trainees, bp operates the two plants in Horst and Scholven in Gelsenkirchen as an integrated refinery and petrochemical site. The processing capacity is about twelve million tons of crude oil per year. In addition to gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and heating oil, this results in more than 50 different products, primarily for the chemical industry. In addition to its great importance for the domestic fuel and energy supply, the Gelsenkirchen site also plays an important role in the North Rhine-Westphalia Chemical Network.