Boosting Capacity

63-year-old Tuscaloosa refinery expands

By Dana Crisson

Materials and technical expertise from around the world are being used for a $750 million expansion at the Hunt Refining Co. refinery in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

BE&K Construction of Birmingham, Ala. – now a division of KBR – is providing project management services and substantial portions of the engineering, procurement and construction for the expansion.

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BE&K began construction on the project in May 2008, with a completion date scheduled for mid 2010.

Founded in Alabama in 1946, Hunt Refining is a petroleum refining and marketing company that is a major regional supplier of gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and asphalt. The company is headquartered in Tuscaloosa with transportation and storage facilities in Mobile, Ala., western and eastern Mississippi, and central New Jersey.

The refinery expansion is strategic to Hunt Refining. The new units will not only increase capacity, but will also increase the yield per barrel. The new units will double gasoline and diesel production while expanding the throughput of crude oil from 52,000 to 65,000 barrels per stream day.

BE&K’s portion of the expansion includes construction of a new 24-mi pipeline, flare and delayed coking unit, as well as new complex units: hydrogen plant, continuous catalyst regeneration, platformer, hydrocracker, and utilities & offsite battery limits. The company is also providing vital project management services to Hunt.

At peak, the project will have a construction workforce of close to 1,000 craft workers. Currently, the project employs about 400 BE&K craft workers and 100 Hunt subcontracted craft workers. By the completion of the expansion, more than 2.2 million workhours will have been expended.

CB&I Constructors Inc. is performing the engineering and procurement for the new complex, while Hunt is performing substantial revamps and infrastructure work in the existing facility.

One of the largest milestones for the project involved transporting two 1,100-ton hydrocracker reactors, fabricated in Massa, Italy, to the jobsite.

“It was a complicated process, both logistically and commercially,” says Glen Moulder, project manager for BE&K. “The reactors were actually larger in capacity than the project required, but when they became available, Hunt decided to buy them. Once the fabricator released the hydrocracker reactors, Hunt had to remove them from the European Union in 90 days or be assessed a large penalty tax.

“Fortunately, we found a ship under construction in Germany that was completed in the 90-day time frame, and the reactors were loaded for their maiden voyage.”

The reactors traveled through the Red Sea around the Cape of Good Hope and were eventually loaded on barges in Houston for the final leg of the journey. Now they are safely sitting in the lay down yard awaiting installation. The reactors are scheduled to be erected in the hydrocracker unit during this quarter.

“The company is expecting a number of international shipments from Italy, but none of them will be quite as dramatic,” Moulder says.

“Our scope of work on each unit ends with a mechanical completion event ensuring that everything is complete and ready for the owner to begin startup activities,” Moulder says.

BE&K is also hosting a new training program at the Hunt Refining jobsite that will benefit not only the contractor and client but the entire community. Known as EPC-University (Engineering, Procurement and Construction University), the program was initiated to introduce BE&K recruits to the fundamentals of industrial construction. In the past, new hires received on-the-job training when they were assigned to a project, learning primarily by trial and error.

“Our goal is to introduce employees to the fundamentals of the business and to explain the vernacular at the very beginning of their career,” Moulder says. Participants receive certificates when they have successfully completed all 26 hours of the college level training.

A project specific BE&K Craft Training Center is set up at the jobsite but outside the work area.

“We pride ourselves on innovative solutions to problems, so we offer many different levels of training for craft workers and supervisors. This training includes new hire training, which prepares new employees with little or no experience for entry into the world of heavy industrial construction, upgrade training for workers who wish to enter a more skilled area of the work or rise within the current trade, instruction for supervisors to upgrade their areas of expertise, language classes in Spanish, and even Big Achievers, which is our version of the current reality show ‘The Biggest Loser,’” he said.

“We view education as an opportunity to give back to our community, and we hope this initiative will open opportunities for our company to recruit the best talent in the future.”