150 Olympic swimming pools full of oil.

Although, or precisely because oil consumption is declining worldwide, the need for options for storing crude oil is increasing. Because the ongoing production cannot simply be stopped and started up again – the oil produced has to be stored somewhere and in a safe and easily accessible place until it is sent for transport

That is why Saudi Arabia commissioned the Egyptian company Petrojet, based on a strategic partnership between Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to build an oil tank in Agroud, a little northwest of Suez, practically at the entrance to the Suez Canal. From there it is only a few kilometers to the port facilities in the Suez Canal and an existing pipeline leads directly to Agroud. An almost perfect location for an interim storage facility.

The ROBUR partner company TEC Egypt was commissioned by the general contractor ARESCO with the entire assembly. TEC has already implemented many special projects – but a project of this magnitude in the oil and gas industry was a new territory for their experienced team. TEC Egypt had already started its first smaller oil and gas projects in 2018 for Shell and later also for Total, providing recommendations and excellent references, which were then decisive for the commissioning for this major project.

And the size is really something new for most Europeans, whoever imagines an oil tank of European dimensions should think again. With a diameter of 110 meters, almost an entire football field fits in here and the 22 meter height corresponds roughly to an 8-story house. The capacity of this tank is a gigantic 175,000 m3 – enough to fill 150 Olympic 50-meter swimming pools. And the 3,250 tons of steel installed correspond to the weight of almost 3,500 mid-range cars.

200 technicians performed 410,000 working hours in around 8 months for the assembly – 70% of these were spent on the approximately 26.1 km of weld seams. 100 welding machines and 4 automatic welding machines were used for this. A total of around 56 tons of welding electrodes, 600 bottles of CO2, 200 bottles of propane gas as well as 12,000 cutting and 3,000 grinding wheels were used for the angle cutters.

The floating roof is a worldwide specialty. The round roof with a diameter of 110 meters floats on top of the oil. It is a construction with many airtight chambers similar to a pontoon. The advantage of this design: The oil is virtually airtight, there is hardly any outgassing and the risk of fire is significantly lower.

There will be more projects of this magnitude in the coming years. In addition to a decline in global oil consumption caused by Covid19, the energy transition with more wind and solar energy is causing consumption to shrink and the need for interim storage facilities for the existing production facilities is growing. This project was also a milestone for TEC as an international player for major projects in the oil and gas industry.

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150 Olympic swimming pools full of oil.

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