The Brunei Petrochemical Project is located on Brunei Grand Morah Island. Before the project moved in, it was a swampy desert island. Now, as one of the first key construction projects included in China's Belt and Road, builders from China have built it into a world-class petrochemical center and become a beautiful business card of Chinese construction.

Project profile

The Brunei Petrochemical Project is a 10-million-ton refinery and chemical integration project jointly built by Zhejiang Hengyi Petrochemical Co., Ltd. and the Brunei government, and is undertaken by Chinese enterprises including three CNCEC enterprises. Since April 2017, Grand Morah has welcomed more than 14,000 construction workers for the Brunei Petrochemical project. As one of the main contractors, CNCEC No. 3 undertook the core project of 1.5 million tons/year aromatics joint plant, as well as the whole plant process and heat pipe network, water supply and drainage and fire control pipe network, plant road and rainwater drainage, rainwater monitoring and accident pool, lake water utilization device, plant vertical and full-site flood drainage and other 18 project construction tasks, with a contract value of 2.1 billion yuan.

The aromatics joint plant of Brunei Petrochemical project has large engineering volume, tight construction period and long front line, and the engineering content covers the whole professional level of ground pipe to installation. Equipment, pipeline, steel structure, etc. are prefabricated in China, which is difficult to coordinate, long logistics links, difficult management, and puts forward extremely high requirements for project planning, organization and execution.

Advance to Great Morra

After winning the bid, Zhao Yaming, who has a wealth of overseas engineering management experience, has been entrusted with the responsibility of secretary and manager of the Party branch of Brunei Branch of CNCEC three companies. He set up an experienced, responsible and successful project management team, and carefully selected 13 professional engineering companies to invest in the project construction.

Great Morra is extremely ultraviolet, and in addition to a full set of safety suits and labor shoes, workers wrap their necks and faces as much as possible with scarves. However, this safety suit in the heat makes people sweat, and even the sun is peeling. With the scorching sun beating down during the day and the torrential rain nowhere to escape, fighting against the harsh environment is the daily work of the builders. At the beginning of entering the market, CNCEC three companies faced many difficulties: materials, machinery and equipment could not keep up with the construction progress of the site, construction points were many, the front line was long, steel structure, process pipeline schedule was tight, and the amount of prefabrication was large... The lack of fresh water resources on the site, the transportation depends on fast boats, diesel for power generation and other problems also bring many obstacles to the construction task.

The project combined with the reality, repeated research and demonstration, and found the key points and breakthroughs to win this vicious and hard battle. Under the overall coordination of the project management team, the prefabrication plant in Qidong, Jiangsu Province, China, took the Brunei site schedule as a reference, carefully prepared the prefabrication and logistics plan and strictly implemented it, so that the domestic prefabrication, logistics port, and island construction were like full power production lines, interlinked, closely linked, and efficient operation.

According to the mechanical demand, the project management team conducted in-depth research on the domestic and foreign machinery market, and determined the strategy of long-term use of machinery purchase and short-term use of machinery leasing. In the process of implementation, a number of large cranes were dispatched from the country, some commonly used cranes and horizontal transport vehicles were purchased locally, and a large number of cranes and machinery were leased from neighboring countries. At the peak of installation, nearly 100 cranes were used on site, of which more than half were leased. On the basis of meeting the needs of mechanical use, it effectively reduces the cost of mechanical use and reduces the one-time investment in fixed assets.

In December 2018, the furnace tube welding of the heating furnace was fully spread and the requirements for welders were extremely high. The project team formed a high-level welding team on the site and formulated a highly incentiveable contracting unit price. Through professional contracting, the welding task of 17 tubes of the heating furnace was completed in 1 month, and the welding pass rate reached 98.5%. After the delivery of the project on July 10, 2019, CNCEC Three Company ensured the safe and smooth trial operation of the combined Aromatics device and supporting works, and handed over an excellent answer to the owners of Hengyi and the people of Brunei with the high quality of the project construction.

Quality construction project

In November 2019, the core device of the project was 1.5 million tons/year combined with the aromatics device to officially produce paraxylene, benzene and other aromatics products, and the purity of PX products reached 99.7%, marking the completion of the whole process of the project and a successful commissioning test. In May 2020, the project will be fully completed and put into operation, and the production capacity, quality, environmental protection and other indicators will meet or even exceed the design requirements. In 2020, the project will achieve an output value of 48.32 billion yuan and a profit of 478 million yuan, accounting for 50.57% of Brunei's import and export trade and 5.73% of Brunei's GDP. The project also became the largest Belt and Road project that China had implemented at that time, the largest foreign direct investment project in Brunei, and the first overseas petrochemical project that fully implemented Chinese industrial standards from design, manufacturing to operation.

The completion and operation of Brunei petrochemical project has promoted the local oil and gas downstream industry in Brunei, and created a win-win example for Chinese enterprises to cooperate with the sea. It has promoted economic and strategic cooperation between China and ASEAN countries, enhanced mutual trust, exchanges and friendship, and won praise and praise from the Brunei government and owners. The Bruneian media described it as an economic catalyst for Brunei and neighboring countries. In March 2022, the project won the China Construction Engineering Luban Award (Overseas Project) issued by the China Construction Industry Association.Editor/Ma Xue