HEMMED IN ON ALL SIDES

If you want to get a good sense of the Thaioil Clean Fuel Project, you might want to open up your laptop and launch Google Earth.

Type in the name of the Sriracha Refinery, and you will begin to descend towards Thailand’s picturesque coastline, heading a little south of Bangkok and alongside the beach resort of Pattaya. Go in closer, and you will soon see the sprawl of the existing refinery, which dates back to the 1960s and is being comprehensively updated, enabling it to produce the latest generation of low-emission fuels. You will also notice the bare earth marking out greenfield portion of the project, which will help to boost the refining capacity from 275,000 to 400,000 barrels a day.

Go closer still, and you will begin to appreciate one of the defining characteristics of this project. Because, on one side, it is hemmed in by a densely forested mountain. And, on the other, it lies cheek-by-jowl with the community of Sriracha – which, as well as extending all the way to the perimeter fence, separates the project site from the region’s transport infrastructure.

Go down to street level, and you will get a good sense of the vibrancy of this community as well as its proximity to the site. All of the approach roads are lined with houses, shops, restaurants and hawker centres, dogs run this way and that, and the scene constantly buzzes with pedestrians and motorcycles. It’s a hive of activity.

“It’s difficult to imagine a more confined and busy situation,” explains the project’s Interface Manager Almostafa Elfatah. “There’s not an inch of free space anywhere. We’re surrounded on all sides. We’re working in and around a live production facility. Access is difficult. Yet, somehow, we need deliver a vast mega project within a four-year timescale.”

AN EXTREMELY BUSY SITE CALLS FOR PRECISION PLANNING AND INTRICATE SEQUENCING
The issues of a busy site are made all the worse by the number of stakeholders involved.

In total, the upgrade of the refinery has been divided into 60 different packages. Of these, the Petrofac-led project dwarfs all others (in fact, in terms of relative size, it’s like an elephant surrounded by a horde of scurrying mice). But, for Almostafa, as Interface Manager, alongside the two consortium partners, he needs to interact with 59 other projects, all of which are vying for the limited space, as well as windows of time when deliveries can be made and tie-ins can be scheduled.

It also means that, from a design and construction perspective, a modularisation strategy had to be pursued, with huge portions of the new facility being pre-fabricated offsite, primarily in India and China, and then transported, fully intact, to be pieced together onsite like a giant Lego set.

The closest parallel in Petrofac’s history is perhaps the Upper Zakum field development located offshore Abu Dhabi. As an Island site, that too was desperately short on space, and a modularisation strategy was deployed. But there, fewer than 200 modules were involved – here, it’s closer to 400, some of which weigh up to 2000 tonnes.   

“It’s an exercise in precision planning and intricate sequencing,” explains Project Director Srikanth Nagaraj. “We simply don’t have the space to do it any other way. Everything needs to arrive in the right order, and everything needs to be ready for its arrival. You could call it choreography, but on a vast scale.”

FAST FACTS

THAIOIL CLEAN FUEL PROJECT

SRIRACHA REFINERY

COMMUNITY RELATIONS – THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING GOOD NEIGHBOURS
A key goal and success factor for the project team is environmental protection and minimal impact on the community that lives close by the site.

A dedicated community relations team works full time on this aspect of the project. Noise control, access control and dust control are constant considerations. “Risk management falls under my remit,” explains Almostafa. “And of the many risks that need to be mitigated, the potential for community dissatisfaction is one of the most significant. So, for example, we work closely with community leaders and have invested significantly in acoustic shields and street cleaning trucks.”

COVID-19 – HITTING EVERY DIMENSION OF THE PROJECT
As if all of this was not enough to contend with, the project has also coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Covid has had a big impact, it continues to have a big impact and, as I speak, there is no clear visibility of how things are going to evolve,” explains Srikanth. “On the engineering front, we handled it well, shifting to home-working, equipping our engineers with powerful laptops, and providing secure access to cloud-based applications. On the procurement front, some of our big source markets – initially China, then Italy, and currently India – have been badly hit which, clearly, has had an impact. On the construction front, we’ve made good progress, but have had to contend with lockdowns and travel restrictions, which has been hard on our onsite teams.”

An ongoing concern, for the welfare of colleagues and counterparts, and also for the project itself, has been the situation in India, where many of the modules are being prefabricated.

On the plus side, there is a clear sense among the teams that the pandemic has accelerated the shift to digitalization. New technologies and tools have been deployed, it is feeling more natural for some colleagues to be located remotely, there has been less reliance on international travel, and there is agreement that, post-pandemic, many of these new behaviours will persist.

“Yes, the pandemic has affected our delivery, but what we have managed to achieve is quite remarkable,” adds George. “The engineering and procurement are substantially complete, the construction is well underway, and the centre of gravity is now shifting from the home office to the site itself. Given the difficult circumstances, our teams have much to take pride in, and I offer my sincere thanks to everyone – particularly those who have been separated from family and home for extended periods.”

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