Ma'aden Umm Wu'al Phosphate Project

Client: Ma'aden Wa'ad Al Shamal Phosphate Company (MWSPC)

Location: Ras Al Khair and Umm Wu'al, Saudi Arabia

Map showing the location of Ma'aden Umm Wu'al Phosphate Project

Executive Summary

Fluor provided project management consulting (PMC) services for the development of the Umm Wu'al Phosphate Project and related facilities. The project is considered the anchor industry at the newly developed Wa'ad Al Shamal Industrial City for Mineral Industries located in the Northern Region of Saudi Arabia. The Umm Wu'al project is one of the largest integrated phosphate fertilizer facilities in the world. Key in helping meet global food supply needs, the facility delivers diammonium phosphate (DAP) and nitrogen, phosphorous and potash (NPK) fertilizers.

Client's Challenge

Ma'aden and joint-venture partners Mosaic and SABIC built a new phosphate plant in Wa'ad Al Shamal Industrial City. Other mineral and secondary production industries would be added at later dates.

Once completed, the Umm Wu'al project would have an annual capacity of 3 million MTPA of DAP/MAP and NPK fertilizers.

Fluor's Solution

Our scopes of work included:

Providing overall PMC services for the development of the Umm Wu'al phosphate project
Supervising and managing the feasibility study, including the development of basic design packages undertaken by a FEED contractor
Managing the development, strategy and tendering of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages
Assembling and managing six international and three local EPC/EPCM contractors with team members in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, United States, Canada, Spain, China, Korea, Italy, Philippines, India and Saudi Arabia.
Providing engineering and procurement services for the truck loading and unloading facility, concentrate storage facility and gas pipeline; procurement of operations spare parts; and operations and readiness services

The Umm Wu'al project was executed from our office in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia with support from other global locations, including Fluor's offices in Greenville, Dublin and Houston in the U.S., as well as offices in the UK, Canada, Netherlands, China, Spain, South Korea, Philippines and India.

We hired more than 80 Saudi nationals to support the project, providing detailed training on our processes and procedures. We set a goal of at least 20% local Saudi labor content on the project beginning in year one.

With a peak site workforce of 28,000 spanning more than 50 nationalities, we also implemented our world-class safety programs, including Fluor's Life Critical^SM program. As a result of these programs, the project across all contractors achieved more than 46 million work hours without a lost-time incident.

Conclusion

We provided PMC services for the Umm Wu'al phosphate project.

In August 2017, the Umm Wu'al phosphate project began production of ammonia, merchant-grade acid and fertilizer. The project is one of the largest integrated phosphate fertilizer facilities in the world.