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SAR Dakar Refinery (Nov 2022) | Source: SAR corporate website

Presentation

The Société Africaine de Raffinage (SAR) is supplying the Senegalese domestic market with butane gas, super gasoline, regular gasoline, kerosene, oil, diesel oil and fuel oil. The SAR facilities cover an area of ​​32 hectares and has undergone successive improvements since 1961. From 600,000 tonnes at its start, the processing capacity has increased to 1,500,000 tonnes per year to date.

Crude Oil Supply

Most of the SAR’s imports of crude oil come from Nigeria (Bonny Light, Erha…). This crude is transported by sea in 100,000 T tankers and transferred to the SAR’s crude tank farm by a 5.6km sea-line. The crude oil tank farm consists of seven tanks with a total capacity of 220,000 m³

Refining

Oil refining is an industrial process for transforming crude oil into various finished petroleum products. It is a heterogeneous mixture of hydrocarbons with various molecules composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms. Crude oil is unusable in its raw state. Its components must be separated in order to obtain directly exploitable final products. For the production of quality petroleum products and the supply of the domestic market, the African Refining Company has the following units:

Distillation:

Composed of atmospheric and vacuum distillation, this unit with a capacity of 180t/h allows the extraction of products such as directly marketable butane, light gasoline, naphtha, kerosene, total diesel and fuel oil.

Merox:

This acid gas removal unit allows the kerosene collected from distillation to be transformed into JET or jet fuel with specific specifications.

Catalytic Reforming:

With a capacity of 18t/h, the catalytic reforming unit can transform naphtha from distillation which has a low octane rating into reformat with a high octane rating complying with certain specifications.

Refinery Improvements

(Source: cyan, ARDA Africa, 11^th Sep 2022)

In order to meet the new AFRI4 and AFRI5 requirements and position itself for Senegalese oil refining, measures have been taken in the short and medium term to adapt the facilities to the context:

• Expansion of distillation capacity from 1.2 to 1.5 million tonnes per year with the addition of a preflash unit during the regulatory shutdown in 2021.

• Expansion of the reforming unit from 14 to 18T/h (compatible with increased butane production).

• Construction of a gas oil hydrodesulfurization unit (HDS) which will: guarantee access to more sulfurous crude oils (cheaper on the market) and integrate the demand for low sulfur diesel (new AFRI6 specifications).

• In the long term, expand distillation capacity from 1.5 to 3.5 million tonnes to satisfy the Senegalese market and part of the sub-regional market. This new configuration will allow the refinery to process Senegalese crude mixed with Erha crude at: 75% Petrosen crude and 25% Erha crude.