The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Refining awarded a Pre-Front End Engineering and Designing (Pre-FEED) contract to the Wood Group, a global leader in engineering, project and technical services, for a new refinery in Ruwais, ADNOC announced on February 21.

The award is for a state-of-the-art refinery with a production capacity of 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day, which will be designed to have full conversion capability and allow integration with petrochemicals industries in Ruwais.

“Today marks a significant step towards fulfilling ADNOC’s strategy of developing the largest integrated refinery and petrochemicals complex in the world,” ADNOC Refining CEO, Jasem Al Sayegh said.

The Pre-FEED contract is the second stage in a four-stage process to get to the beginning of construction. The previous stage was a feasibility study. The Pre-FEED stage is expected to be completed by the end of 2019.

The $45 billion expansionary downstream strategy will provide the company with the chance to increase the range and volume of high-value downstream products it sells.

ADNOC inked on January 27 two new agreements with Eni and OMV for refining and for a trading joint venture (JV) which will be jointly established by the three companies. Under these agreements, Eni and OMV will provide ADNOC with the needed know-how, operational excellence and support.