Transportation of refinery components during a planned shutdown for the Residue Fluidized Catalytic Cracking (RFCC) project, Oman

ALE were contracted to perform transportation support during a planned refinery shutdown of six Heavy Lift (HL)/ Out of Gauge (OOG) units for ORPIC’s RFCC Project located in the Sohar Industrial Area, some 230km north west of Muscat.

Services Required

The HL components comprised a regenerator, internal dome, orifice chamber, air distributor and transport air distributor. The weight of the components varied from 27t – 310t.

ALE received the units from the vessel, transported and offloaded them using conventional hydraulic trailers.

ALE utilised 36 axle lines of conventional trailers and two heavy duty prime movers to transport the components 4km from the port to the laydown area / foundation on site.

Due to the abnormal dimensions of the units – measuring up to 16m wide – and the delivery point in a congested live refinery, ALE needed to undertake a considerable amount of modification works within the area in order to successfully accomplish the project within a finite period of time. This involved project management and close coordination with the local government authorities, private tenants within the area, and the Royal Oman Police.

In total, the project took one month to complete and ALE has now been recently awarded the works to re-deliver the old components to port after the successful completion of phase one.