cal complexes or petrochemicals associated with offers significant economic and environmental refinerycomplexes,” headds. benefits over conventional MMA manufac-

Foster Wheeler’s global E&C group reported turing routes, and is set to revolutionize the first-quarter Ebitda, ended March 28, of $134.5 production cost-base for MMA, the basic million, down 4.7%, on operating revenues up building block of the acrylics industry. This

59%, to $1.39 billion. The com pany’s E&C is the first in a series of Alpha-based facilities group consists of five businesses: plannedby Lucite International. upstream oil and gas, midstream Foster Wheeler and several of oil and gas, refining, chemicals, its rivals say they remain bullish and pharmaceuticals. For the first on opportunities in the Mideast, quarter, the chemicals business rep- even as most of the major petchem resented about 24% of overall E&C projects in the region come to a revenues, Foster Wheeler says. Total close. “The investments are less backlog for Foster Wheeler’s E&C concentrated on the Middle East, group was $7.2 billion in total reve- but there’s still surprising strength nue, $1.75 billion of which was from Allen: Surprising there,” Allen says. One change is its chemical business. ^{strength in Mideast.} that the Mideast market is starting Foster Wheeler’s largest project currently is to eye downstream projects, such as specialty ExxonMobil’s second olefins complex at Jurong chemicals, he says.

Island, Singapore. The multimillion-dollar Foster Wheeler’s Mideast projects include projectcoordination, andengineering, procure- an EPC contract for the utilities and offsites ment, and construction (EPC) contract was at Petro Rabigh, the $10-billion refining awarded to Foster Wheeler and WorleyParsons and petchem jv between Saudi Aramco late last year. The complex is due for comple- and Sumitomo Chemical at Rabigh, Saudi tion in 2011. In Singapore, Foster Wheeler was Arabia. The Qatar Petroleum and Honam appointed as the EPC contractor for Lucite Petrochemical jv awarded contracts to Foster International’s previously announced project to Wheeler last year for FEED and project man-build a 120,000-m.t./year methyl methacrylate agement consultancy (PMC) services for the (MMA) plant at Jurong Island. The new plant jv’s petchem complex at Mesaieed, Qatar. will use Lucite’s proprietary state-of-the-art The complex, which is due onstream in 2011, Alpha technology which, according to Lucite, will have ca pacity to produce 800,000 m.t.-

 

Air Liquide Widens technology Portfolio with Lurgi Purchase

Air Liquide says the acquisition of Lurgi last year doubled the size of its engineering business, to about 3,000 employees, half of whom are based in emerging countries. Air Liquide says the main reasons behind its purchase from the GEA Group (Bochum, Germany) were to increase its engineering operations and widen its technology portfolio, particularly in the industrial gases business, including steam reforming and gasification as well as gas cleaning, sulfur management, and biofuels.

Lurgi plans to further develop and modernize its technology portfolio.

“We will particularly focus on gasification technologies for which we see a strong demand in the future,” says Lurgi’s CEO François Venet. The company Venet: Engineering will also focus on second-generation biofuels, which do not “compete” with ^{business doubles.} the food chain, he says. Lurgi will carry out work for Air Liquide as well as third-party contracts.

Lurgi has been integrated into Air Liquide’s Engineering and Construction business, which consists of Cryogenics, Air Liquide’s traditional activities. The company will “definitely” keep its headquarters in Frankfurt, Venet says. “The competencies and skills of both companies complement each other perfectly,” he says.

Air Liquide does not publish financial data for its subsidiaries. Venet says he is “quite satisfied” with the order backlog. The company is working on a mega methanol project in Malaysia and a carbon monoxide unit in Saudi Arabia, both projects were awarded before the acquisition and are being executed in cooperation with Air Liquide. Methanol-to-propylene (MTP) is a particularly promising technology developed by Lurgi, he says. The company has so far been awarded one MTP plant in Iran and t wo in China.

Meanwhile Lurgi Zimmer, the wholly owned subsidiary of Lurgi, “forms part of the Air Liquide Group and is presently working successfully on its own projects, albeit with no specific strategic link to Air Liquide,” Venet says. —NA

900,000 m.t./year of ethylene and 900,000 m.t./year of propylene. Downstream plants will produce 700,000 m.t./year of polypropylene; 600,000 m.t./year of styrene; and 220,000 m.t./year of polystyrene.

The Shaw Group’s energy and chemicals division posted a 17% increase in revenues, to $273.3 million, for its fiscal second quarter ended February 28. Energy and chemicals backlog was $2.2 billion. Project volume is up “significantly” in the refining sector, and strong global ethylene demand is expected to drive further grassroots plant construction, the company says. High capital spending and M&A activity in the energy, chemicals, and utilities segments is also driving consulting demand, the company says.

Shaw’s recent wins include a contract to provide technology, engineering and procurement services to Guru Gobind Singh Refineries’ deep catalytic cracking unit at Bhatinda, India. Shaw also won a technology, engineering, and procurement contract for two 200,000-m.t./year acrylonitrile butadiene styrene plants for Tianjin Dagu Chemical Industry at Tianjin, China.

Fluor’s oil and gas unit posted first-quarter revenue up 55%, to $2.6 billion, compared to the year-ago quarter. New oil, gas, and petrochemical awards totaled $4.3 billion, Fluor says. Ending backlog for the unit rose 46%, to $20.4 billion, from one year ago.

One of Fluor’s focuses is polysilicon, and the company currently has such projects under way in China, Norway, Russia, and the U.S., Oosterveer says. Fluor’s biggest project in the last year is a $1-billion EPC management award for solar wafer producer LDK Solar’s (Xinyu, China) new polysilicon facility—the world’s largest—at Xinyu City, China, he says. Fluor had originally booked the FEED work for this project in 2007, and booked the remainder earlier this year. Completion is slated for July 2009.

“Three years ago, most of the business was in the Mideast, but that is starting to change now as a lot of the projects are not of the same magnitude and the number of projects has decreased,” Oosterveer says. However, “there still are some opportunities there.” Fluor’s Mideast projects include a $1-billion contract for EPC management and pre-commissioning services to Saudi International Petrochemical’s (Al Khobar) planned acetyls complex at Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The facility will have 460,000 m.t./year of acetic acid capacity and 300,000 m.t./year of vinyl acetate monomer capacity, and is scheduled for completion by year-end.

CH2M Hill has several “ multi-hundred-mil-lion-dollar” chemical projects globally that are in the engineering, design, and construction