The Ra's Lanuf Refinery is a topping and reforming oil refinery

Oil refinery

An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas...

 in Ra's Lanuf

Ra's Lanuf

Ra's Lanuf is a Mediterranean town in northern Libya, on the Gulf of Sidra. The town is also home to the Ra's Lanuf Refinery, completed in 1984, with a crude oil refining capacity of . The oil refinery is operated by the Ra's Lanuf Oil & Gas Processing Company, a subsidiary of the state-owned...

, Libya

Libya

Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....

. It is part of a larger petrochemical complex also consisting of an ethylene

Ethylene

Ethylene is a gaseous organic compound with the formula . It is the simplest alkene . Because it contains a carbon-carbon double bond, ethylene is classified as an unsaturated hydrocarbon. Ethylene is widely used in industry and is also a plant hormone...

 plant, a polyethylene

Polyethylene

Polyethylene or polythene is the most widely used plastic, with an annual production of approximately 80 million metric tons...

 plant, plant utilities, and Ra's Lanuf Harbor. Until 9 March 2009, the complex was operated by the RASCO

Rasco

Keida Brewer , known professionally as Rasco , is a rapper from San Francisco, California, United States, whose early recordings were released on Stones Throw Records...

, a subsidiary of the National Oil Corporation

National Oil Corporation

The National Oil Corporation is the national oil company of Libya. It dominates Libya's oil industry, along with a number of smaller subsidiaries, which combined account for around 70% the country's oil output...

. The current operator is the Libyan Emirates Oil Refining Company.

History

The Ra's Lanuf Refinery became operational during 1984. In 2007, the decision to expand the refinery for the production of benzene

Benzene

Benzene is an organic chemical compound. It is composed of 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with 1 hydrogen atom attached to each carbon atom, with the molecular formula C6H6....

, butadiene, and MTBE was made. For this, NOC concluded a contract to establish a joint venture with Dow Chemical Company

Dow Chemical Company

The Dow Chemical Company is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. As of 2007, it is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue and as of February 2009, the third-largest chemical company in the world by market capitalization .Dow...

.
In 2008, a $2 billion contract with the Star Consortium, comprising the Al Ghurair

Al Ghurair

Al Ghurair is a diversified industrial group based in Dubai and focuses on Foods, Resources, Construction, Properties; and additionally within Energy, Printing & Publishing, Retail and Education.-Foods:Al Ghurair Foods entered the foods industry sector in 1976 through the...

's subsidiary TransAsia Gas International and ETA Ascon Star Group's Star Petro Energy, to own and upgrade the refinery was concluded. However, in March 2009, NOC and Al Ghurair's subsidiary Trusta signed an agreement to form a joint venture the Libyan Emirati Refining Company (Lerco) to operate and upgrade the refinery.

The storage tanks to be built by Vitol

Vitol

The Vitol group is an energy trading company founded in Rotterdam in 1966. Vitol operates worldwide and, along with Glencore and Trafigura, is one of the world's top three crude oil traders. Vitol's headquarters are located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Geneva, Switzerland...

. The expansion is expected to be completed by 2013.

Description

The refinery has a capacity of 220000 oilbbl/d. It is a simple hydroskimming

Hydroskimming

Hydroskimming is one of the simplest types of refinery used in the petroleum industry. A hydroskimming refinery is defined as a refinery equipped with atmospheric distillation, naphtha reforming and necessary treating processes...

 refinery, but its products meet market specifications due to high quality crude oil. It produces fuel oil

Fuel oil

Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash...

, gas oil, naphtha

Naphtha

Naphtha normally refers to a number of different flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons, i.e., a component of natural gas condensate or a distillation product from petroleum, coal tar or peat boiling in a certain range and containing certain hydrocarbons. It is a broad term covering among the...

 and kerosene

Kerosene

Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...

. The complex also produces petrochemicals, utilizing naphtha as a feed stock to an ethylene

Ethylene

Ethylene is a gaseous organic compound with the formula . It is the simplest alkene . Because it contains a carbon-carbon double bond, ethylene is classified as an unsaturated hydrocarbon. Ethylene is widely used in industry and is also a plant hormone...

 plant with a capacilty of 1.2 million tons per year (tpy). Its main products are ethylene (330,000 tpy), propylene

Propylene

Propene, also known as propylene or methylethylene, is an unsaturated organic compound having the chemical formula C3H6. It has one double bond, and is the second simplest member of the alkene class of hydrocarbons, and it is also second in natural abundance.-Properties:At room temperature and...

 (170,000 tpy), Mix C4

C4

C4, C04, C.IV or C-4 may refer to:* C-4 , a type of plastic explosive* Hafdasa C-4, an Argentine submachine gunIn biology:* C4 carbon fixation, a pathway for carbon fixation in photosynthesis...

(130,000 tpy) and P Gasoline (335,000 tpy).