By Lee Hyo-sik

Samsung Engineering announced Friday that it has won a $2.47 billion project to construct a chemical plant in the United Arab Emirates.

Under the deal with Takreer, an oil refining unit of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the Korean firm will build a carbon black and delayed coker plant. It is the eighth order in five years from ADNOC, the United Arab Emirates’ national oil firm and its affiliates.

The facility will be located in the refining complex in Ruwais, west of Abu Dhabi. When completed, it will be capable of producing 40,000 tons of carbon black per year and 30,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

Carbon black is a fine carbon powder used as a pigment. It is made from burning hydrocarbons in insufficient air. Delayed coker is a process by which heavier crude oil fractions can be thermally decomposed under conditions of elevated temperatures and pressure to produce a mixture of lighter oils and petroleum coke.

Samsung will provide project management services for the engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning processes on a lump-sum turnkey basis. The plant will be completed by December 2015. Turnkey projects are constructed by a developer and sold or turned over to a purchaser in ready-to-use condition.

``This order further highlights Samsung Engineering’s project management and engineering expertise, as well as our strong partnership with Takreer. We look forward to executing this landmark project under the highest standards,’’ company CEO Park Ki-seok said.

This is not the first time Samsung has secured a large-scale project from ADNOC. The firm recently won the Ruwais Refinery Utilities and Offsite package worth $2.73 billion. It also oversaw all packages of the $10 billion Ruwais Refinery Expansion as the official interface manager.

Samsung’s eight projects from ADNOC and its affiliated units are worth $9.1 billion.

The Korean builder has also won a number of lucrative industrial plant projects in other Middle Eastern countries.

In March, it won a $1 billion contract to build an oil development-related facility in Iraq. Under the deal, Samsung will build a gas oil separation plant in Basra, Iraq, by July 2014. The plant will process crude oil and separates gases, making the crude economically viable for storage, processing and export.

Last year, the construction firm completed the world’s largest lubricant base oil plant in Bahrain, which can produce up to 400,000 tons of oil annually.