Engineering and construction firm Fluor (FLR 0.36%) announced it was awarded a front-end engineering and design contract for a proposed petrochemical project in Qatar.
The Al-Karaana petrochemical project, a likely cornerstone of future petrochemical development projects in the emirate, will be a world-scale ethane-based cracker and derivatives complex, including two train monoethylene glycol units, linear alpha olefins, and oxo alcohol units. It will also require utilities, infrastructure, and offsites.
Qatar Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell's Shell Global Solutions division plan to build the grassroots petrochemical project in Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar, where the two previously developed the world's largest gas-to-liquids plant, Pearl GTL.
Fluor's president of energy and chemicals Peter Oosterveer said, "The Middle East is an extremely important region for Fluor, and we are honored that QP and Shell have selected our experienced petrochemical team for this project."
Front-end engineering and design is early stage planning that irons out technical issues and roughly estimates the investment cost of the project. Fluor will book the undisclosed contract value into backlog in the first quarter of 2013.
