Eastern Refinery Unit -2 Chittagong
is the leading oil refining company in Bangladesh, situated in North Potenga at Chittagong. According the plan to develop the second unit (ERL Unit-2), we ‘GeoTech Engineering Ltd.(GEL)’ has been appointed by the ‘Technip FMC’ to conduct the soil investigation and other relative tests inside the ERL.
ERL is the most important Oil Refinery in Bangladesh, as it is the only one in Bangladesh. As the demand of oil refining has increased in recent year, the ERL has decided to develop the next refining plant inside ERL area and also reconstruct the whole ERL. This is why, the Soil investigation was required by the ‘Technip FMC’ before the construction starts.
Issues
It has been described by the Technip FMC and ERL, the work sites are not work friendly due to their remote position. Especially the ‘E Zone’, which has not been visited by anybody in last 15 years approximately. So the safety issue was the most important topic of this project. Due to the Monsoon, heavy rain was expected and it occurred several times during the project. We had to stop the boring, TP, ER and TC works several times because of rain and storms. The heavy rain made us to stop working several times fro couple of days. Due to the site condition; it was not easy to access the actual test location. On the other hand, most of the working points are in low land area. So after the heavy rainfall, the points used to go under water and it was not possible to remove the water, unless they go away naturally.
Wild animals such as Snakes, Ditches and Foxes etc. were there inside the ERL. So we had to careful about them as we can’t kill them as off the Rules & Regulations of Forestry Department. For that reason, we just tried to clear the areas of actual work locations. We were highly conscious about the safety measurements for all the workers, Engineers, Safety officers, supervisors and others related to the field work.
Background
History of the research
It is important to have the soil investigation report before the construction starts. As the ERL Unit-2 will be a huge construction and it is very important construction work, the soil investigation is the first priority. This is why; the soil investigation has been done prior to the actual construction. This soil investigation is the first and only soil investigation for the ERL Unit-2 project. No other related research has been done before this investigation.
Involvement
This soil investigation is not a part of a national research program. The client was ERL of this project. Technip FMC was the consultant for this soil investigation project, Engineering India Limited worked as Project Management Consultant, Development Technical Consultants Pvt. Limited (DTCL) has done the investigation without any partnership with any other company/firms. But the soil testing has done by the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). Soil samples collected (according the instruction of Technip FMC) in the field has been submitted to the BUET for testing purpose. The soil testing results will be received from BUET as per the scheduled date.
Scope
The scopes of this specification include the following:Surveying and setting out of investigation points
- Deep machine boring and drilling in soil.
- Standard penetration test (SPT)
- Vane shear test
- Undisturbed sampling of soil
- Groundwater record and sampling
- Permeability test
- Standpipe piezometer
- Electrical resistivity test
- Thermal conductivity test
- Test pit test
- Laboratory tests
- CPT Test
- Soil Investigation Factual Report