| Danial Norjidi |
WORK on Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd’ multi-billion dollar refinery and petrochemical plant project at Pulau Muara Besar (PMB) is progressing on schedule, with site construction set to be completed by the end of 2018, a top official of the company said.
The refinery is expected to begin operation in the first half of 2019, Chen Lian Cai, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd, told the Weekend Bulletin in an interview yesterday.
Chinese company Hengyi’s project at PMB was initiated by the Brunei Economic Development Board (BEDB) and has a site area of 260 hectares. The project is worth more than US$4 billion and, once completed, the refinery is expected to produce eight million tonnes of by-products per year including aromatics, gasoline and diesel, providing enough fuel to meet local demand.
“As you know, we already initiated the project, and it is going on schedule. The latest situation is that we already finalised the site preparation,” said the CEO.
He highlighted that as PMB is a low-lying wide island, making it into land suitable for construction for industry requires a lot of spending and time.
“We are going to kick-off the jetty construction soon. There are six jetties altogether, and we are targeting to complete all six of these jetties by the end of this year. We are also targeting to initiate the piling at the site.
Chen Lian Cai, the Chief Executive Officer of Hengyi Industries Sdn Bhd. – DANIAL NORJIDI
“According to our plan, the site construction will be completed by the end of 2018, so we will start the commissioning and the operation of the refinery by first half of 2019.”
Chen asserted that Hengyi is working hard to fulfil the target, adding they will also need the continued “full support from the local Brunei Government”.
“This is a huge project and we must push forward steadily, and we are also targeting to build a world class refinery.”
It was previously reported that the project will create 780 jobs. Asked if this figure remains, the CEO said, “Since there have been some adjustments in the
“According to our commitment to the Brunei government, the local content of employment after eight years of operation must reach 60 per cent.”
Asked for further comment on the power plant, he said, “Since we initiated the power plant project later than (those in) the other parts, it will run a bit later.”
“We are still in the stage of design, but according to our estimates, it will not influence the overall schedule.”
It was reported during a BEDB-led site visit to PMB last year that a power plant was to be built to provide power to the various facilities there.
Continuing on the topic of employment, Chen said, “The petrochemical industry has high requirements for the qualifications and technical skill of its staff.”
“At the beginning of the refinery operation, the rate of localisation may not be quite high. The rate of local content will be increased step by step and we are confident to fulfil the requirements set by the government.
“That’s why currently we are trying our best to push forward the joint scholarship programme,” he said.
The petrochemical firm has an ongoing partnership with Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) to award scholarships to selected students to study at China’s Zhejiang University. To date, three batches of UBD students have signed the joint Chemical and Process Engineering scholarship between the two universities.
“We are going to push this forward and it should continue to be a long-term project,” Chen said.
Asked for his thoughts on how the falling oil prices will affect the petrochemical industry, and their project at PMB specifically, Chen said, “Our industry at PMB is actually middle-stream – between the upstream and downstream industries – so the upstream, the crude price, will not have any direct influence to the profit of the midstream petrochemical industry.
“This is a huge investment and Hengyi chose Brunei, and I’m sure that the investment will benefit both Brunei and Hengyi,” the CEO affirmed.
“We hope to contribute to economic development in Brunei.”
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