The project to erect a new naphtha hydrotreating facility—currently under construction by Graycor Industrial Constructors—at BP’s Whiting Refinery in Whiting, Indiana, was featured in an article published by the NWI Times on July 12, 2018.

The article is excerpted below and may be viewed in its entirety here.

BP pumping $300 million in new unit at Whiting refinery, creating up to 500 construction jobs

BP is investing $300 million in a massive project in Whiting that’s creating hundreds of construction jobs.

About 250 workers are now installing a naphtha hydrotreater at the BP Whiting Refinery on Lake Michigan to mee [sic] a new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandate to ensure that gasoline has less than 10 parts per million of sulfur, instead of the current standard of 30 parts per million. BP Whiting Reliability Accelerator Manager Dan Hirsch said it would create about 12 permanent jobs to operate the equipment and employ as many as 500 construction workers at a time over the new [sic] few years.

“We’re making one of the largest investments in refinery since the modernization project,” he said. “A hydrotreater removes sulfur from our fuel. In layman’s terms, it makes our gas cleaner. We’ve actually started the project. You might see some of the equipment moved around on the roads. We’re staging our equipment, starting to bring it into the refinery. We’re excited to see continued investment into our refinery.”

The unit should be up and running by 2020, Hirsch said. It will include two reactors and exchangers that will be located near the center of the refinery.

“It’s substantial,” Hirsch said. “It will take all different trades to build: electricians, ironworkers, and pipefitters. It’ll be different trades as it goes along.”