EQUATE, a joint venture of Union Carbide Corporation and Petroleum Industries Company, selected Fluor as the overall program managing contractor for the Kuwait Petrochemical Complex.

This project, one of the largest petrochemical complexes in the world, produced ethylene glycol and polyethylene to serve the Asia-Pacific and Middle East markets. The total installed cost for this megaproject was US$1.4 billion.

The petrochemical complex, located within the Shuaiba Industrial Complex, included four grassroots process plants:

• 650,000-metric-tons-per-annum (MTA) ethylene plant based on an ethane feedstock supplied by the Kuwait National Petroleum Corporation

• 340,000 MTA mono-ethylene glycol plant

• 450,000 MTA linear low-density polyethylene and high-density polyethylene plant

• Offsites and utility facilities

We performed program management and administered the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) areas for the grassroots petrochemical complex. Separately, we were also awarded EPC responsibility for the offsites, utilities and infrastructure.

The EQUATE project was one of the largest lump-sum projects ever undertaken by Fluor. Given the large scale of this project, we leveraged our global execution platform. The Houston office led the engineering and procurement, with piping and structural design done in our Manila office and local contractor coordination at the Kuwait office. We also coordinated the work efforts of a variety of international vendors from Korea, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Mexico.

The infrastructure project consisted of all utility systems, environmental systems, overall project civil work, 19 buildings, raw materials and project pipelines to and from the complex, including dock facilities. We were responsible for the information technology and spare parts programs.