16-12-2013

GE Oil & Gas service contract to support Yara International’s fertilizer complex

GE Oil & Gas today announced it has signed a 12-year contractual service agreement (CSA) with Yara International ASA, a global chemical company based in Oslo, Norway, to maintain an array of GE rotating equipment at Yara’s fertilizer complex in Sluiskil, in the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands.

Under this CSA, GE will provide maintenance and services for 45 compressors, gas and steam turbines and turbo expanders at the Sluiskil site. Yara will benefit from reduced costs for maintenance and GE Oil & Gas’ Contractual Services unit’s project management skills.

This new agreement is part of a long-lasting business relationship between GE and Yara, which was taken further in 2000 with an extended parts and services frame agreement.

The Sluiskil site includes two gas turbines constantly monitored by GE’s iCenter—GE’s remote data monitoring center in Florence, Italy—one of the first high-efficiency heavy-duty MS5002E ever installed.

”With a significant number of GE units installed and operating for over decades at our site and with a long term successful working relationship and gaining good experience from a number of turn key maintenance interventions over the years, it was a very logical step for us to confirm predictability, simplification and cost-efficient planning and execution of turn-arounds and overhauls by extending this into a long-term contracted service agreement. It is our expectation that this will further combine the quality and reliability of GE’s services with our own resources to achieve even better results in reduced maintenance time and costs and longer duration between maintenance interventions,” said Jon Sletten, plant manager of the Yara Sluiskil site.

“As industrial companies look to optimize the efficiency and long-term availability of their production facilities, CSAs at fertilizer plants represent a significant potential downstream growth opportunity,” said Girish Saligram, Contractual Services general manager—GE Oil & Gas. “Therefore, our CSA with Yara is an important model for GE’s strategic growth in the downstream sector.”

Yara is a leading chemical company that converts energy, natural minerals and nitrogen from the air into essential products for farmers and industrial customers. The main application is fertilizers, while industrial uses and environmental solutions also are important growth segments.

Since 1929, the company’s Sluiskil complex has been located on the Ghent-Terneuzen canal, a major waterway opening through the Western Scheldt into the North Sea and connecting to European waterways. As with many European fertilizer complexes, the site’s development was linked to the availability of coke oven gas from a neighboring coke factory. Yara’s Sluiskil site features Europe’s largest installed ammonia and nitrate fertilizer production capacities with three ammonia plants, four CO2 plants, two nitric acid plants, two urea plants and two nitrate granulation plants. Sluiskil has both Yara’s and Europe’s largest installed ammonia and nitrate fertilizer capacities.