OPIS Foundation

Currently, Sierra Leone imports all of the refined petroleum products for her economy. There is a 10,000 bpd refinery in Freetown which has been shut down for since 1991.  Through a joint venture with the Government of Sierra Leone, we propose to refurbish and upgrade and reopen this refinery to provide Sierra Leone with the products it needs.  This project will aid the people of the country by providing jobs, providing much needed revenue for the government for the benefit of the people, and reducing the cost of refined products for the people of the country.  Projected project cost will be between $400 million

 The Project

Benjamin Davies, Minister of Land and Mr.Abshire enjoy each other's company while waiting to meet the Vice President

The former West Africa Refinery in the Kissy Dockyards will be transferred to a 50-50 joint venture partnership between your government and our company.  We will take over the operation of the refinery, perform a thorough engineering review of the facility with a detailed plan to determine the best way to refurbish, upgrade and restart the refinery. In the process we will bring it up to internationally recognized health, safety and environmental standards. Also the refinery will be upgraded from a simple process refinery to a complex process refinery to handle the more prevalent heavier grade of crude oil found today.  After the upgrade, the refinery will produce a wider range of end use products which will be available for use domestically and for export. Because of our commitment to train and utilize local personnel in every possible position within the project, the construction work and the operation of the refinery will result in hundreds of jobs at all levels for Sierra Leoneans. The ultimate goal is the expansion of the refinery facility to a very complex refinery with an 80,000 - 100,000 barrel per day capacity.  The production from this refinery would meet the entire needs of Sierra Leone for many products, and would produce high valued products for export.

Targeted Refinery

 In line with this project we have targeted a decommissioned Chevron refinery, available for sale in Batangas Philippines, which will include the following (see flow diagram on page 4):

• 35,000 b/d #1 Crude/Vacuum Distillation Unit
• 42,000 b/d #2 Crude Distillation Unit/Sour Water Stripper
• 9,000 b/d Naphtha Hydrotreater/Platformer & 16,000 b/d Naphtha Splitter Unit
• 12,000 b/d Fluid Catalytic Cracker & Gas Recovery Unit
• 16,000 b/d Distillate Desulfurizing Unit
• Merox Units
• 10,000 b/d LSR Merox
• 6,000 b/d Jet/Kero Merox
• 5,500 b/d Jet/Kero Merox
• 5,800 b/d #1/#2 LPG Treating Plants
• 40 t/d Sulfur Recovery Plant
• Misc. Utility & Support Systems (including, the 3-5 MW Steam Turbine). 

We anticipate the turn around time to be 18 months and at the end of the process the refinery will be ready to operate as a new facility.

To support the Biodiesel initiative and Jatropha plantations, the Foundation proposes to build a continuous process vegetable oil refinery capable of processing up to 240,000,000 per year (as per our above estimates. The technology is well established with established health, safety and environmental standards. The plant will be specially designed for Jatropha feedstocks and will allow us the capability to produce soap from by products, as well as NPK fertilizer and animal feed from press cake. However, the bulk will go to the planned biodiesel plant

Example of a 1000 ton per day vegetable oil refining unit in Thailand manufactured by Desmet Ballestra

The proposed Bio-diesel plant will operate according to The NExBTL Process.

Chemically, The NExBTL process entails direct catalytic hydrogenation of plant oil, which is triglyceride, into the corresponding alkane. The glycerol chain of the triglyceride is hydrogenated to the corresponding C3 alkane, propane - there is no glycerol sidestream. This process removes oxygen from the oil; the diesel is not an oxygenate like traditional transesteried biodiesel. Unlike the yellow transesterified biodiesel, the product is a clear and colorless paraffin, with a good cetane number (85 to 99) and better properties than even conventional diesel. As it is chemically identical to ideal conventional diesel, it requires no modification or special precautions for the engine.