July 20, 2012:

TransAlta Corp said there were no injuries from a morning fire at its 506-megawatt natural gas-fired co-generation plant at Sarnia, Ont., and it expects operations to resume around noon on Thursday. Peter Smith, TransAlta’s director of commercial management for Eastern Canada said the fire has cut steam supply to Suncor Energy Inc’s 85,000-barrel-per-day Sarnia refinery. Suncor could not be immediately reached for comment on whether the reduction in steam will affect its operations at the refinery.

By Calgary Herald

Jul 19, 2012:

ZUG, Switzerland - Foster Wheeler AG announced today that a subsidiary of its Global Engineering and Construction Group has been awarded a contract by PDVSA Petroleo S.A. for the engineering, procurement services and construction management (EPCm) for the El Palito Refinery Expansion Project in Venezuela. Foster Wheeler will execute the project in consortium with Toyo Engineering Corporation from Japan and Y & V Ingenieria y Construccion from Venezuela. Foster Wheeler and its consortium partners have previously completed the front-end engineering design for the project. The value of the EPCm award was not disclosed and will be included in Foster Wheeler's third-quarter 2012 bookings.

The major expansion of the refinery will include a number of new units, including a 140,000 barrels per stream day (BPSD) crude/vacuum distillation unit, a 24,500 BPSD naphtha hydrotreating/continuous catalytic reformer complex, a 58,000 BPSD vacuum gasoil hydrotreater, a 45,000 BPSD diesel hydrotreater, an 80 million standard cubic feet per day hydrogen production unit, a 250 tonnes per day sulfur recovery/tail gas treatment unit, a new flare system, amine regeneration and sour water stripper facilities, and relevant utilities, interconnecting and off-sites, including marine facilities and a new product storage tank farm.

The expansion is intended to double the refinery's capacity to 280,000 BPSD, processing heavy and extra-heavy crudes from the Orinoco Belt, and increasing production of clean fuels. The project is expected to be completed during 2016.  "Foster Wheeler and PDVSA have, over the years, built a strong working relationship, based on the excellence of our project execution and our world-class technical expertise," said Umberto della Sala, Chief Operating Officer, Foster Wheeler AG. "This relationship, together with our proven ability to execute complex projects and our heavy crude expertise, was key to our success in winning this project." "Foster Wheeler is a strong and capable FEED and EPCm contractor with significant experience in Venezuela and in executing major refinery expansion projects," said PDVSA. "They will play a key role in the project as part of this winning consortium, which consortium is very well-qualified to deliver this important upgrade project successfully and safely." The El Palito refinery is located close to Pto. Cabello, Carabobo state, Venezuela. Foster Wheeler has previously designed and built several units of the refinery.

Foster Wheeler AG is a global engineering and construction company and power equipment supplier delivering technically advanced, reliable facilities and equipment. The company employs approximately 12,000 talented professionals with specialized expertise dedicated to serving its clients through one of its two primary business groups. The company's Global Engineering and Construction Group designs and constructs leading-edge processing facilities for the upstream oil and gas, LNG and gas-to-liquids, refining, chemicals and petrochemicals, power, mining and metals, environmental, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and healthcare industries. The company's Global Power Group is a world leader in combustion and steam generation technology that designs, manufactures and erects steam generating and auxiliary equipment for power stations and industrial facilities and also provides a wide range of aftermarket services. The company is based in Zug, Switzerland, and its operational headquarters office is in Geneva, Switzerland. For more information about Foster Wheeler, please visit our Web site at http://www.fwc.com .

Safe Harbor Statement

Foster Wheeler AG news releases may contain forward-looking statements that are based on management's assumptions, expectations and projections about the Company and the various industries within which the Company operates. These include statements regarding the Company's expectations about revenues (including as expressed by its backlog), its liquidity, the outcome of litigation and legal proceedings and recoveries from customers for claims and the costs of current and future asbestos claims and the amount and timing of related insurance recoveries. Such forward-looking statements by their nature involve a degree of risk and uncertainty. The Company cautions that a variety of factors, including but not limited to the factors described in the Company's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, which was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the following, could cause the Company's business conditions and results to differ materially from what is contained in forward-looking statements: benefits, effects or results of the Company's redomestication or the relocation of our principal executive offices to Geneva, Switzerland; the benefits, effects or results of our strategic renewal initiative; further deterioration in global economic condition; changes in investment by the oil and gas, oil refining, chemical/petrochemical and power generation industries; changes in the financial condition of our customers; changes in regulatory environments; changes in project design or schedules; contract cancellations; changes in estimates made by the Company of costs to complete projects; changes in trade, monetary and fiscal policies worldwide; compliance with laws and regulations relating to our global operations; currency fluctuations; war, terrorist attacks and/or natural disasters affecting facilities either owned by the Company or where equipment or services are or may be provided by the Company; interruptions to shipping lanes or other methods of transit; outcomes of pending and future litigation, including litigation regarding the Company's liability for damages and insurance coverage for asbestos exposure; protection and validity of its patents and other intellectual property rights; increasing global competition; compliance with debt covenants; recoverability of claims against customers and others by the Company and claims by third parties against the Company; and changes in estimates used in our critical accounting policies. Other factors and assumptions not identified above were also involved in the formation of these forward-looking statements and the failure of such other assumptions to be realized, as well as other factors, may also cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Most of these factors are difficult to predict accurately and are generally beyond the Company's control. You should consider the areas of risk described above in connection with any forward-looking statements that may be made by the Company. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You are advised, however, to consult any additional disclosures the Company makes in proxy statements, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, annual reports on Form 10-K and current reports on Form 8-K filed or furnished with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

By Foster Wheeler AG

July 19, 2012:

Tulsa - The Coors Light Refinery Deck offered covered-deck seating to the general public for the Wednesday night Tulsa Drillers baseball game at ONEOK Field. "When we don't have this area pre-sold to corporate groups and activities like this," said Refinery Deck Assistant Manager Jason George, "we open it up and sell it to individual ticket buyers." It's what they call the Cold Zone all-you-can-eat seating. "It's a great area for families and individuals that want to have kind of guaranteed pricing, and for twenty dollars," George said, "you get a great ticket in the shade up in a suite-level area, and you get unlimited hot dogs, nacho bar, peanuts, popcorn, all the ballpark favorites." The Refinery paid for each person's first drink, whether it was alcoholic or non-alcoholic.

By Ktul.com

July 19, 2012:

Saudi Aramco Total Refining & Petrochemical Co., known as Satorp, will receive its first crude oil shipment in December, Eqtisadiah reported, citing a person at the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. it didn’t name. The refinery, which Saudi Aramco is building jointly with Total SA (FP) in the Saudi city of Jubail, is scheduled to be fully operational in the third quarter of 2013, the newspaper said, citing the unidentified person. When completed, the refinery will process 400,000 barrels a day of crude and it will cost $14 billion, the Saudi newspaper reported.

By Bloomberg

July 19, 2012:

BP Cherry Point Refinery may eventually use the railroad to get part of its crude oil supply from the Bakken Formation in Montana and North Dakota. Company spokesman Mike Abendhoff confirmed Wednesday, July 18, that BP officials have visited Whatcom County planning officials to discuss possible construction of $60 million worth of rail improvements at the refinery site to accommodate unit trains of crude oil tanker cars. If the project becomes a reality, the added volume of rail traffic is expected to be relatively low: a train every other day at first, and perhaps a train a day at maximum capacity, Abendhoff said. The crude oil trains probably would travel the rail line through Bellingham and return empty via the same route, although some trains also could be routed via Canada.

The number of trains the refinery project would generate is far less than the maximum of nine loaded trains that could be needed to keep SSA Marine's proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal busy at full capacity. Concern about the possible impact of trains bound for Gateway Pacific - loaded with coal and perhaps other bulk commodities for export to Asia - has triggered a furor in Bellingham and elsewhere. The coal trains, like the oil trains, would return empty via the same rail line through the city. Abendhoff said the company likely will decide within the next 60 days whether to proceed with the refinery rail project and file permit applications with the county. The rail modifications would be built south of Grandview Road and east of Blaine Road, on a site where BP once planned to build a large natural gas-fired power plant. Abendhoff said the company already has done extensive wetlands mitigation elsewhere in anticipation of the power plant project that was never built, and that may make further such mitigation unnecessary, in the company's view. Matt Krogh, North Sound baykeeper at RE Sources for Sustainable Communities, said the proposed crude oil rail shipments need close scrutiny.

"We are of course concerned about transport of large volumes of crude on tracks along the shoreline," Krogh said in an email. "At the same time, if this reduces the number of crude tankers we see coming through the Salish Sea, this might represent a reduction in risk. We do need a close look at what this means for risks to our waterways." Krogh also wants to review wetlands mitigation issues. "We haven't seen a proposal so can't really assess whether the mitigation is adequate or not, nor have we seen an assessment of whether the wetland mitigation they've done is adequate in terms of size and function," Krogh said. "If the wetlands (built as mitigation) really are working well, that's great. Doing mitigation in advance of damage is precisely what we want to see for these kinds of developments, so that ecosystems don't lose functionality for a time during development." Krogh also expressed concern about increased rail congestion that could affect both Amtrak service and availability of rail capacity for other goods. BNSF Railway Co. spokeswoman Suann Lundsberg said the railroad did not expect any difficulty in handling the oil shipments. Abendhoff said the company is studying the rail option as a possible new source of low-sulphur crude oil that is easier to refine into the lower-sulphur fuels that environmental regulations require.

The Cherry Point refinery now handles 225,000 barrels a day of crude oil that arrives from Alaska and many other places by tanker, or by a pipeline that carries crude oil from Canada. "This would give us a third option to bring crude in," Abendhoff said. "This would give us another domestic North American option." At most, the rail shipments could account for about 15 percent of the refinery's crude oil supply, he added. Whatcom County Planning Manager Tyler Schroeder said company officials had an informal discussion of the project with him and Planning Director Sam Ryan in June, but no official paperwork has been submitted. The Tesoro refinery in Anacortes is already getting crude oil by rail, as are a growing number of other U.S. refineries.

By The News Tribune