OREANDA-NEWS. October 10, 2013. Last week, the Saudi Aramco TOTAL Refining and Petrochemicals Company (SATORP), a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and France’s TOTAL, launched the first shipment of its fuel oil production from King Fahd Industrial Port (KFIP). Saudi Aramco lifted this fuel volume, while TOTAL will lift a volume of diesel soon.

SATORP’s chairman, Saudi Aramco’s vice president for Engineering Services, Samir Al-Tubayyeb, expressed his delight at the first shipment from the SATORP refinery, which will play a major role in supporting the Kingdom’s economy through production of refined petroleum products and petrochemicals.

“This joint venture between Saudi Aramco and TOTAL will generate added value to the local economy through creating jobs and providing local contractors with opportunities for further downstream investments. The refinery is expected to create 1,200 direct jobs in the Kingdom, with each of them entailing five indirect employment opportunities.” Al-Tubayyeb said.

SATORP president and CEO Fawwaz Nawwab said SATORP is one of the strategic projects for Saudi Aramco and TOTAL because it will fulfill obligations to the local and global economy. Nawwab pointed out that the refinery, among the most sophisticated and advanced in the world, is operated by quality administrative and technical personnel. It was designed with the capability to increase its capacity in the long-term.

“The return from SATORP on the local economy will not be limited to meeting increasing demand, but also creating jobs for Saudis directly and indirectly, and making products that may result in spurring new industries in the future,” Nawwab explained.

In January 2009, Saudi Aramco and TOTAL began executing a contract to build and operate a world-scale conversion refinery with a capacity of 400,000 bpd of Arabian Heavy crude oil in the Jubail-II Industrial City. SATORP is owned 62.5 percent by Saudi Aramco and 37.5 percent by TOTAL, and both will market the joint venture’s products.

George Moreno, SATORP’s vice president for manufacturing, confirmed that the SATORP refinery will be one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated, refining Arabian Heavy crude and converting it into products meeting the strictest specifications to fulfill growing demand for environment-friendly fuels.

The refinery, he added, is a full conversion refinery, which will produce large volumes of diesel, jet fuel, paraxylene, benzene and propylene. With such magnitude and sophistication, the refinery will undoubtedly be one of the wonders of the oil and petrochemical industry.

Despite the complexity of the project, environmental protection was a priority.
“SATORP is committed,” Moreno said, “in all its operations and business, to maintain the health, safety and security of all its and its contractors’ employees, visitors and neighbors including those in the adjacent industrial facilities or residential neighborhoods. In doing so, SATORP guarantees that its employees work in a safe environment and perform their jobs to the highest levels of quality. We achieve all this through implementation of best practices and technologies, taking into consideration the preservation of the natural environment in which we all live and work.”

SATORP’s vice president for Human Resources and Services is Mohammed Fahd Al Otaibi, a 32-year veteran of Saudi Aramco. He noted that through 100 workshops, the SATORP team devised a plan to recruit the best talent from the Kingdom and the world.

“Young employees train in Saudi Aramco’s Apprentice Program then gain experience by doing training assignments in refineries around the Kingdom, United States and Korea,” he said. “Recent engineering graduates completed two-year technical assignments in refineries in Europe in cooperation with TOTAL.”

SATORP achieved a 61 percent Saudization level, and through the contractors, additional jobs will be created as they meet Saudization obligations by training and employing local talent.

Coincidently, the first cargo from SATORP was loaded on Saudi National Day. “This gave us two occasions to celebrate,” Fawwaz Nawwab said