An oil reduction unit in Spain is a rapidly moving project thanks to a Linden Comansa crane.

Petronor, a subsidiary of Spanish oil and gas company Repsol, is almost done with the works at the refinery of Muskiz in Spain. Since 2008, the com?pany is building a fuel oil reduction unit (FRU) plant on its facility, with the help of a Linden Comansa 21 LC 550 tower crane, with 18 tonne of maximum load.

The crane is the property of the company Duro Felguera, specialists in industrial and energetic projects; with Imasa and Cotinsa, they form the tem?porary consortium that is in charge of the project. Linden Comansa?s official dealer Algrusa, has carried out the erection of the crane as well as the planning and execution of the different jacking-ups.

The 21 LC 550 18t works with a jib length of 80 m, and its final height under hook has been 120 m, for which it needed two tie-frame collars and 94,500 kilos of ballast on the 6-m wide folding cross base. The work of the crane is focused on the construction of a petroleum coke plant, where it is lifting and assembling pipes, support elements and different structures.

With these new facilities, Petronor wants to reduce its fuel oil production, and increase the production of other fuels such as gas, propane, butane, gasoline, coke, etc. This change is mainly due to the progressive decrease of fuel oil demand, which is used especially for the maritime transport and industrial uses, whereas the rest of fuels, especially diesel oil, have been increasing demand up to such a point that most of the products have to be imported from other countries.

For this important adaptation of the refinery, Petronor has invested around 835 million euros (around $1,160 million). The petroleum company also thinks that the construction of the new plants have generated around 1,500 jobs, and when the project is finished, a further hundred direct jobs and around 240 indirect jobs will be created.