China’s Shaanxi Chemical Construction Engineering Company has signed a contract for electromechanical work on Algeria’s Hassi Messaoud refinery project, according to a statement from the company.

It said the contract marked “a significant breakthrough for the company in the Algerian refining and petrochemical engineering market”.

Under the terms of the contract, Shaanxi Chemical Construction is responsible for the installation and construction of core units within the facility.

Shaanxi Chemical Construction’s main construction scope focuses on the PK4 continuous reforming unit and supporting utilities system in the project’s core unit area, with a designed processing capacity of 1.35 million tonnes a year (t/y).

The scope includes:

• Natural gas system
• Naphtha hydrotreating system
• Continuous catalytic reforming system
• Fuel oil system
• Fuel gas system
• Plant and instrument air system
• Nitrogen system
• Condensate and condensate polishing system
• Caustic alkali storage system

Preliminary construction preparations for the project are progressing steadily and systematically, according to the statement from Shaanxi Chemical Construction.

A consortium of Spain’s Tecnicas Reunidas and China’s Sinopec is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the project.

The scope of the wider project includes:

• Construction of a crude distillation unit
• Construction of a vacuum distillation unit
• Construction of a continuous catalytic reforming unit
• Construction of a hydrocracker unit
• Construction of an isomerisation unit
• Construction of a naphtha hydro‑treating unit
• Construction of a hydrodesulphurisation unit
• Construction of a storage facility
• Construction of lubrication oil facilities
• Construction of administrative buildings

Algeria’s national oil and gas company Sonatrach is the client on the project, which is being developed in Algeria’s Ouargla Province.

The refinery will have the capacity to process 85,000 barrels of oil a day (5 million t/y).

The project will have a capacity to produce 2.7 million t/y of diesel fuel and 1.2 million t/y of gasoline.

In 2024, Sonatrach cancelled its $1.3bn contract with South Korea’s Samsung Engineering for the Hassi Messaoud refinery project and replaced it with China’s Sinopec.

Samsung Engineering confirmed the contract’s cancellation on 28 November 2024 without specifying the reason.

Sonatrach officially signed the main contract award for the Hassi Messaoud refinery with the consortium of Samsung Engineering and Tecnicas Reunidas in January 2020.