Kuwait National Petroleum Corp. (KNPC) had plans to build a new refinery in Al Zour near the Kuwait-Saudi Arabia border. In March 2009, the Kuwaiti government decided to cancel the project. The 615,000-b/d facility would have helped Kuwait boost the emirate's refining capacity from 936,000 to 1.4 million b/d by 2012.

The refinery's process units were to include the following: three crude units; three atmospheric residue desulfurization (ARDS) units; three diesel hydrotreating units (HTUs); two naphtha HTUs; two kerosene HTUs; two saturated gas plants; heavy oil cooling; HP/LP flares; hydrogen recovery and compression; four hydrogen production units; three sour water strippers; three amine regeneration units; three sulfur recovery and tail gas treating (TGT) units; and a sulfur conveying system and sulfur palletizing.

The refinery would have been built to produce ultra-low sulfur diesel, jet fuel, kerosene, and naphtha feedstock for petrochemical plants. Low-sulfur fuel oil from the refinery would be used for Kuwait's power plants.

KNPC awarded contracts for the refinery based on five overall facets of this very large project. The company awarded Fluor Corp. a $2 billion contract for project management services. A consortium of JGC Corp. and GS Engineering and Construction Corp. won a $4 billion contract to provide the facility's main manufacturing units. The task of equipping the refinery with subsidiary units went to SK Engineering and Construction Co., which received a $2 billion contract for this component of the project. Daelem Industries was charged with providing tanks for the refinery ($1.184 billion contract) and Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. the related offshore facilities ($1.12 billion). On March 20, 2009, Fluor announced that KNPC had ordered it to stop work on the project.

The estimated cost of the refinery ranged from $15 billion to $19 billion, which would have translated into roughly three times the $6.3-billion price tag that KNPC initially anticipated. The refinery would have begun operations in May 2012.

The project faced significant obstacles from Kuwait's government. In August 2008, Kuwait's cabinet and members of parliament called for an audit of the project. Concerns had been expressed that some contracts were not awarded to the lowest bidder. Such actions are not unprecedented in Kuwait, where the parliament has a history of challenging the government.