Completed in 1950, Repsol YPF's Cartagena Refinery is located in Cartagena in Spain's Murcia province. The 110,000-b/d refinery produces fuels, lubricant bases, asphalts, paraffins, and aromatic oils. It is the oldest refinery on the Iberian Peninsula.

The Cartegena Refinery's process units include the following: crude distillation; naphtha redistillation; naphtha desulfurization; reformer catalyst; amine; sulfur recovery; acid water exhaustion; deasphalting; turboalternators; vacuum distillation; dehydrogenizing benzene; furfural extraction; dewaxing; bleaching and molding of paraffin; cogeneration plant; 40 bar vapor producing boilers; gas concentration; sweetening and merox desulfurization; and hydrogen recuperation. The refinery complex also includes a commodities and storage area as well as a marine terminal. In addition, it is at the head of a pipeline that sends crude oil to Repsol's Puertollano industrial complex.

Expansion project

Repsol's board on January 8, 2008, approved a project to double the capacity of the Cartagena Refinery to 220,000 b/d. The expansion will help the company reduce the current deficit in gasoils in Spain. Given the size of the project, Repsol has divided the work into a series of blocks that will be coordinated by various engineering firms.

Foster Wheeler-Intecsa has been charged with engineering and supervision of the construction of the following project segments:
--Block 1: vacuum, coker, concentration of gases of the coker, merox, butadiene
--Block 3 A: plants of sulfur, amines, and acid waters

Tecnicas Reunidas and INITEC will engineer and supervise construction of the following blocks under turnkey arrangement:
--Block 2A: Hydrocracker (HC)
--Block 2B: Topping - gas concentration of topping, HDS of GO of topping, HDS of GOLde coker, HDS of coker's naphtha

Fluor will engineer and supervise construction of the following:
--Block 3B: General infrastructures of the areas described above and new energies and movements facilities.

Tecnicas Reunidas, under turnkey contract, will conduct engineering and construction of H2 plants.

In the engineering stage of the oil pipeline to Puertollano, Heymo will handle pipeline development and Intecsa-Inarsa will oversee the refineries' pumping centers and facilities.

Repsol stated that basic engineering for the project is complete, and detailed engineering is expected to conclude in the first half of 2009. Earth movement and other preliminary work is slated for completion during Second Half 2008. . Mechanical assembly work will begin sometime at the end of 2008 or during the first four months of 2009. Construction will be carried out during the last quarter of 2008 and in 2009.

The project's scheduled completion is 2011.