Baytown Fuels Refinery Expansion

Exxon selected Fluor to perform the design, engineering and procurement scope to make their Baytown, Texas, refinery the largest of its kind in the United States. The Baytown expansion is the largest part of an overall Exxon expansion program to add an additional 250,000-barrels-per-day (BPD) capacity at their domestic refineries.

Fluor had responsibility for this major expansion to increase capacity from 350,000 BPD to 600,000 BPD with process capability for domestic or foreign high-sulfur crude. Product output includes low-sulfur residual fuel oil, low-sulfur heating oil, diesel fuel, gasoline and jet fuel.

Client's Challenge

The capital investment provided the Baytown facility the ability to produce 650,000 BPD of either domestic or foreign high-sulfur crude oil and to produce low-sulfur residual fuel and heating oils, diesel fuel, gasoline and aviation jet fuel. Exxon utilized a new technology by Exxon Research and Engineering (ER&E) called residfining to desulfurize atmospheric reduced crude to produce low sulfur fuel oil.

Fluor's Solution

Given the large scale of this project, Fluor leveraged its U.S. execution platform. The Houston and Irvine offices shared the design and engineering effort, with Houston managing the large procurement purchases and logistics.

Process units in the project include:

250,000-BPD atmospheric crude unit with light ends processing
Large catalytic reformer
Naphtha hydrofiner
LGO hydrofiner
Kerosene hydrofiner
Residfiner for desulfurization of atmospheric residuum with some vacuum resid
Fluor aqueous monoethanolamine (MEA) scrubbers with MEA regeneration facilities
Hydrogen plant, utilizing MEA-scrubbed refinery gas as a feedstock
Sulfur units with an aggregate capacity of 847 tons per day
Offsites, including four 600-psi waste heat boilers with feed water treating facilities, four gas turbine generators, a 60-million-gallons-per-minute refinery cooling water system, an 8-10-million-gallons-per-day industrial water treating and distribution system, and two 8000-standard-cubic-feet-per-minute centrifugal compressors for refinery air service

The local task force reached peaked with over 250 personnel, with over 2.8 million home office hours for engineering and procurement activities.

Conclusion

Throughput at the refinery increased by 250,000 BPD, and the installed value of the expansion exceeded $400 million.