GS E&C's Great Feat

Company clinches second mega-size refinery plant project in the UAE and plans to expand its operation in Vietnam


GS E&C announced that the company has recently been awarded the Green Diesel Project in the UAE, valued at approximately $1.1 billion from Takreer, a member of the ADNOC group of companies. The contract signing ceremony was held in Abu Dhabi with the participation of Woo Sang-Ryong, president of GS E&C's plant division and Jassem Al Sayegh, general manager of Takreer.
While attending the ceremony on June 9 for a highway project near Ho Chi Minh City, Chairman Hur said the GS Group is ready to expand its projects in the Southeast Asian country despite its economic woes of late. The company will continue to keep its projects going ahead as planned, including the construction of a major highway and a planned urban town near Hanoi. They remain confident that the host country's economic difficulties are temporary and it will bounce back in the near future.
The group plans to invest 7 trillion won over the next 10 years in various projects, including the construction of a golf course, villas and other structures in a resort.
Also, an urban town where over 6,000 residential houses are to be built, along with offices and shopping malls. GS E&C will build a 13 km-long expressway near Ho Chi Minh City and turn it over to the Vietnamese government in exchange for 1.02 million square meters of land near the city in 2012 in what is the first transfer deal made between a Korean company and the Vietnamese government.
The Green Diesel Project consists of the construction of a refinery complex, including a hydrocracker unit (41,000 barrels per day) and a gas oil hydrotreating unit (44,000 barrels per day), a sulphur recovery unit (100 tons per day) and other associated units at the Ruwais Industrial Complex located 250 km from Abu Dhabi. GS E&C will execute the whole engineering, procurement, construction and test run process over a 42-month time frame.
This project is a significant milestone for GS E&C as the UAE has previously been a market for advanced foreign E&C companies based primarily in Europe and the United States. GS E&C has again proven its global competitiveness as a refinery plant builder.
Heo Sun-Haeng, executive vice president of GS E&C Overseas Sales Department, said that securing this project confirms GS E&C's superior competitiveness in refinery construction and that it will form the basis of major construction projects in the future.
President Hur Myung-soo, overseeing the overall operation for GS E&C, said at a press briefing on May 14 at the Inter-Continental Hotel in downtown Seoul that the company will attempt to take over a power company affiliated with the Korea Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), when it goes up for sale.
President Hur said the company thought it would be better to own a professional power company -- like an affiliate of KEPCO -- to be able to export power generation facilities abroad.
Currently, the government plans to privatize the Korea Plant Services and Engineering Co. (KPS) and Korea Power Engineering Co. (KOPEC) and part of the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) in charge of the environmental sector.
Chairman Hur said for synergy in the areas of power generation and environmental business, the company will go after any company and not just KEPCO affiliates.
The chairman also said the company will easily win overseas projects worth more than $5 billion this year as $4.1 billion in projects have already been secured with oil companies in the Middle East with the increase in the number of oil refineries and petrochemical plants. The company initially set the overseas project order target at $3.7 billion for this year.
GS Construction won an oil refinery plant project worth $2 billion from KNPC, a Kuwaiti national oil company, which is the first package of the fourth oil refinery plant project. The company won the $3.9 billion project jointly with JGC of Japan with its share totaling $2 billion. nw

TPC-VCM Plant built by GS E & C in Thailand.

GS E&C President Kim Kab-ryul