Jacobs completed FEED on mining Phosphate City
The Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Maaden) is moving into the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase for its $6 billion capital expenditure Phosphate City project.
To be located in the north of Saudi Arabia, the Phosphate City project is also called Al-Khabra project as Maaden is aiming at debottlenecking the Al-Khabra phosphates mines.
Through the Phosphate City project, Saudi Arabia intends also to develop the economy in the north of the country with transformation industries and infrastructure investments.
In this perspective, Maaden designed the $6 billion Phosphate City project in two parts, upstream and downstream.
The upstream part of Maaden‘s project includes all the:
- Mining operations
- Eight processing units
- Power distribution plant
- Related offsites and utilities.
The downstream activities will integrate the City side of the project with all the:
- Transformations industries to produce fertilizers, ammonia and animal feed.
- Export facilities
- Housing
- Commercial centers
- Schools
- Infrastructure and associated services
From a total of $6 billion capital expenditure budgeted for the whole Phosphate City project, Maaden plans to spend around $4 billion for the upstream part and $2 billion on the downstream side.
With this Phosphate City project, Maaden is willing to develop the 236 million tonnes of phosphate lying in the Al-Khabra deposit at Waad al-Shamal, 40 kilometers northeast Turaif along the norther border with Jordan.
In addition the Phosphate City project will give the opportunity to Saudi Arabia to stretch the North-South Railway network upper north.
The downstream activities will be developed near by the port of Ras al-Khair on the coast of the Persian-Arabic Gulf in the Eastern Province.
South Korean contractors racing for first EPC package
In April 2012, Maaden had awarded the front end engineering and design (FEED) work separately for upstream and downstream parts of the Phosphate City project where:
- Jacobs Engineering and its local partner Zamel & Turbag Consulting Engineers (ZATE) were appointed for the mining activities
- Bechtel was selected to design the City on the downstream side.
The same companies should have been awarded for the project management consultancy (PMC) contract of their respective part of the project.
But in November 2012, Maaden decided for the PMC to go with:
- Fluor for the mining activities of the upstream side
- Bechtel for the downstream activities
Now Maaden is moving to the next step in preparing the award of the EPC packages of the mining for the upstream.
The first package to be awarded should be related to the ammonia plant.
The dead line comes at the end of February.
Maaden qualified only four South Korean companies among the pretenders:
- GS Engineering & Construction
- Hyundai Engineering & Construction
The second package to be awarded is related to the Mono-Potassium Phosphate.
The third package will include the Tri-Acetate Phosphate.
The following packages will cover the: 
- Phosphoric acid (MGA) production
- Purified phosphoric acid
- Sodium tri-poly-phosphate
- Mono-calcium phosphate
- Di-calcium phosphate.
The low metal content of the Al-Khabra deposit with grade of 17 to19.6% P205 is offering a high quality of phosphate for a large scope of use from fertilizers to the food industry in the domestic market and for export.
This export ambition increases to complexity and costs of the project for the transportation from Al-Khabra to the port of Ras al-Kahir.
In starting the first awards of the EPC packages on the second quarter 2013, Maaden expects the completion of the Phosphate City project in 2016.