L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering bags ‘significant’ orders
Larsen & Toubro (L&T) on Tuesday said one of its wholly-owned arm has bagged two orders in the construction services segment — one each from GAIL India and Air Products Middle East Industrial Gases LLC. The company did not provide the value of the contracts, but said the orders fall under the ‘significant’ category, which ranges between Rs 1,000 crore and Rs 2,500 crore, according to the classification of contracts. “L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering Ltd (LTHE)… has bagged two orders in the construction services segment – one each from GAIL India and Air Products Middle East Industrial Gases LLC,” the company said in a regulatory filing. L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering Limited is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Larsen & Toubro. The first order is for GAIL India’s Mumbai-Nagpur Pipeline, under which the company will be responsible for laying steel gas pipeline-section 1 of Part A and construction of terminals along with associated facilities, the filing said. The pipeline project, due to be laid alongside the upcoming Mumbai-Nagpur super communication expressway, has a schedule of 14 months, the filing said. LTHE’s second order comes from Air Products Middle East Industrial Gases LLC for its Industrial Gas Hub (IGH) Network project at Jubail, KSA. Under the contract, the company will construct a steam methane reformer to produce hydrogen, an air separation unit to produce oxygen and nitrogen, and hydrogen pressure swing adsorption units. The overall duration of the project is 22 months, it said. Both the contracts were secured by LTHE’s construction services business which offers turnkey construction of refinery, petrochemical, chemical and fertiliser projects, gas gathering stations and specialises in oil a gas terminals and field development including storage tanks and underground cavern storage systems for LPG, and cross-country hydrocarbon pipelines.
Oil giant Shell sets sights on sustainable aviation fuel take-off
Royal Dutch Shell plans to start producing low-carbon jet fuel at scale by 2025, in an attempt to encourage the world’s airlines to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Aviation, accounting for 3 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, is considered one of the toughest sectors to tackle due to a lack of alternative technologies to jet fueled-engines. Shell, one of the world’s largest oil traders, said it aims to produce 2 million tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) by 2025, a ten-fold increase from today’s total global output. Produced from waste cooking oil, plants and animal fats, SAF could cut up to 80 per cent of aviation emissions, Shell said. Shell, which at present only supplies SAF produced by others, including Finnish refiner Neste, said on Monday it wants green jet fuel, which can be blended with regular aviation fuel with little need to change plane engines, to make up 10 per cent of its global aviation fuel sales by 2030. SAF accounts for less than 0.1 per cent of today’s global aviation fuel demand, which reached around 330 million tonnes in 2019, investment bank Jefferies said. Growing the market faces several hurdles, primarily due to the cost of SAF, which is currently up to 8 times higher than regular jet fuel, and the limited availability of feedstock. Shell said it wants others to follow its lead. “We also expect other companies to add to it with their own production plants,” Anna Mascolo, head of Shell Aviation, told Reuters. The United States said last week it wants to cut aircraft greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent by the end of the decade by significantly boosting SAF usage. NEW PRODUCTION Anglo-Dutch shell, which aims to reduce emissions from fuels it sells to net zero by 2050, is in the midst of a large overhaul aimed at producing more low-carbon fuels such as biodiesel and SAF, as well as hydrogen. Shell plans to build a biofuels processing plant at its Rotterdam refinery with an annual capacity of 820,000 tonnes, with SAF set to make up more than half of the output. The plant is expected to start production in 2024. In a new report on the decarbonisation of aviation published together with Deloitte, Shell called for the sector to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050. The International Air Transport Association, representing most of the world’s airlines, aims to halve emissions by then. Reducing emissions to net zero can be achieved by using more low-carbon fuel and offsetting the remaining emissions through carbon credits. Shell is also developing synthetic aviation fuel made from hydrogen and recycled carbon. “Sustainable aviation fuel, whether bio SAF or synthetic SAF, remains the single biggest solution,” Mascolo said.
L&T Hydrocarbon Engineering wins order from Petronet LNG
Larsen & Toubro Hydrocarbon Engineering (LTHE) said on Monday it has won a significant order from Petronet LNG, a joint venture company promoted by Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation, GAIL India and Bharat Petroleum Corporation. The contract is for engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of two LNG storage tanks with a capacity of 170,000 m3 each for phase 3-B of Dahej expansion project in Gujarat. LTHE said the project has been awarded through an international competitive bidding on a lumpsum turnkey basis. “The award demonstrates Petronet LNG’s trust on L&T’s capability to deliver the project within a challenging schedule while ensuring excellent safety and quality performance,” it said in a statement. LTHE said it is committed to being an active EPC player in achieving the government’s target of increasing the share of natural gas in primary energy mix from current 6 per cent to 15 per cent by 2030. The company is is also executing LNG tanks for Dhamra terminal in Orissa. Organised under offshore, onshore, construction services, odular fabrication and AdVENT verticals, LTHE delivers design-to-build engineering and construction solutions across the hydrocarbon spectrum.
KEC International buys Gujarat company for oil & gas projects
RPG Enterprises’ flagship infrastructure company, KEC International, has diversified into engineering and construction for the oil and gas sector with an acquisition and a key appointment of a senior executive, and has ambitions of bagging big-ticket orders in future, its chief executive told ET. On Saturday, KEC announced the acquisition of Gujarat-based Spur Infrastructure at an enterprise value of ₹62 crore. The company recently appointed former Shell executive Gouri Venkatesh as its chief technology officer. While Spur Infrastructure will help KEC fulfil eligibility criteria for oil and gas pipeline projects, Venkatesh will guide the company to expand its offerings to the sector by tapping into his experience at the Dutch energy major, said Vimal Kejriwal, who is also the managing director at KEC. “The government is talking about ‘one nation-one grid’ and we expect around ₹5,000 crore to ₹6,000 crore of tenders to be floated every year. There are only 3-4 players in the country and we felt there was an opportunity for us,” Kejriwal said. “We will work on projects in India and then we can look at overseas markets like the Middle East.” Spur Infra, incorporated in 2016 by oil and gas sector professionals, has been working on cross country oil and gas pipelines and city gas distribution networks and has annual revenue of more than ₹100 crore. The company has an order book of ₹600 crore, which KEC will acquire. KEC currently has confirmed orders and likely orders where it has emerged lowest bidder worth ₹27,000 crore.