SASREF Refinery

SASREF refinery or Saudi Aramco Jubail Refinery Company (SASREF) is a Saudi company wholly owned by Saudi Aramco. The refinery is located in Jubail Industrial City, and is one of the largest global refineries that use high-tech in its operations. It consists of two high-tech refining units: the hydrocracker unit and the thermal cracking unit. Both have the property of fully converting crude oil into high-quality and profitable white products.

The refinery was first established in 1981 when the General Petroleum and Mineral Organization (Petromin) and Shell Global signed an agreement to establish an oil refining complex in Jubail Industrial City. Construction was initiated in 1982. Then in 1984, the refinery was completed with the start of the first unit.

On December 23, 1986, the company was inaugurated by King Fahd bin Abdulaziz. The refinery production operations increased and reached by the end of 1988 more than 305,000 barrels per day. The later development occurred in February 1989 when the ownership of Petromin’s share was transferred to the Saudi Arabian Marketing and Refining Company (SAMAREC), then the latter transferred its shares in July 1993 to the Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco). On September 18, 2019, Aramco acquired the entire shares of Shell Saudi Arabia.

The refinery produces naphtha, high-sulfur fuel oil, jet fuel and diesel fuel. It also owns and manages a refinery that includes a hydrocracker unit, a visbreaker unit and a thermal gas oil unit.

Aramco acquired Shell's equity in the SASREF joint venture for SAR2.4 billion, thus expanding Saudi Aramco's net refining capacity by 152.5 thousand barrels per day. Because of this agreement, Aramco became the sole shareholder in SASREF and changed its name to "Saudi Aramco Jubail Refinery", which owns and operates the refinery.

The refinery was built on a land area covering two km, and adheres to strict controls to protect the environment, as well as advanced procedures to monitor emissions. The capacity of each crude distillation unit is 150,000 barrels per day, and the capacity of the hydrocracker unit is 52,000 barrels per day. It is one of the largest units of its kind in the world. Moreover, it includes an aromatic plant that produces six thousand barrels of benzene per day, with a continuous reformer unit that has a capacity of 21,400 barrels per day.

The refinery facilities also include a thermal gas oil unit and a combined cycle gas turbine, which is the first of its kind in the world, in addition to a single centralized control room that enhances the refinery's entire operational management, whilst maintaining safety, performance and equipment reliability. The advanced operations of management systems will increase the quantity of the product while maintaining the same specifications.

The refined products of the SASREF refinery are pumped through seven pipes, extending from the refinery to storage tanks at the refinery's export terminal in King Fahd Industrial Port in Jubail, where samples are collected and examined to ensure their compliance with the required specifications before export.

The port's refinery tanks area consists of twenty-five tanks, with a total capacity of 1.3 million m. The station also includes a fire fighting unit, and a control room to follow up on and monitor cargo operations inside the station. The fourteen pumping stations can load ships at a rate of five thousand mper hour. Every day, at least one ship carrying the refinery's products leaves the terminal.

In July 2017, SASREF won Shell Safety Award on Goal Zero achievement for three consecutive years (2016, 2017 and 2018), with its best-in-class operating and safety systems.

The refinery also obtained two of Aramco's President's Excellence Awards in 2018 for health, safety, and environment, as well as the Operational Excellence Award for its operational capability.

SASREF realized an important achievement in 2022, as it obtained the world's first independent certification for the production of blue ammonia and blue hydrogen.