Dubai – Emirates National Oil Company (Enoc) announced on Monday the expansion of its Jebel Ali refinery facility by 50% of its refinery capacity and is to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2019.

Enoc announced in a statement that the project to expand the facility from 140,000 bpd to 210,000 barrels consists of three separate packages of an estimated cost of $1 billion.

The company said that the main package includes a process to increase production. Other new units include a liquefied petroleum gas/naphtha hydrotreater, an isomerisation unit, a kerosene hydrotreater and a diesel hydrotreater that will help produce petrol, jet fuel and diesel to meet domestic demand and fuel emissions standards for markets that include Europe.

Enoc’s vice chairman, Saeed Mohammed al-Tayer said that meeting the growing energy demand tops the government’s agenda.

“This ambitious expansion project is one of the key building blocks in the energy infrastructure sector to meet future demands and support our sustainable growth in line with Dubai Plan 2021,” he added.

As part of Emirates’ continuous attempt to use clean energy, the refinery will produce energy products according to the standards of Euro5.

Technip Italy, a unit of the company based in Rome, will be the engineering, procurement and construction contractor handling all aspects of the design and construction of the main processing unit.

Whereas that the Front End Engineering Designing was completed by KBR in the United States.

Licenses were provided by UOP, Axens, and KT.

Regional manager of Technip in Europe, Middle East, India, Africa and Latin America Marco Villa said that the agreement to expand the refinery comes as part of the long-term partnership between Technip and Enoc which started in 1999.

The other packages involve the construction of storage tanks and a 31,000 square foot warehouse.