Offsite Investment Cost Estimation

Published October 2006

SRIC’s Process Economics Program provides plant investment estimates for a wide range of chemicals, polymers, and refinery processes. The design and procurement methods used in these process industries have gone through a revolution in the past decade with the growth of turnkey procurement, and the increasing integration of equipment suppliers and E&C firms. In the past, SRIC has published several reports on cost estimation. This report is a followup to PEP Report 145A, “Estimating Plant Investment.” The following report focuses on several offsite categories, including steam generation, refrigeration, cooling water, inert gas, and general service facilities. The intention of this report is to update some of the correlations and algorithms presented in previous reports. In addition, this project addresses some of the sources of variability across these reports in an effort to provide some uniformity and clarification of terms as well as the approach used in estimating costs.

The present report updates the algorithms and correlations used to estimate offsite investments. It presents over one hundred new cost correlations describing a wide range of equipment and installation bulk costs for a variety of offsites. The results of this effort are applicable to the oil refining, petrochemicals, and specialty chemical industries. These correlations are based in part upon information provided by PEP client companies as well as the open cost estimation literature and our own data analysis. All of the correlations presented here are based on non-confidential information. The goal of this project has been to prepare a cost estimation data set that will allow the preparation of Class 3 estimates with minimum design engineering effort.

Other PEP Related Reports:

• Battery Limits Cost Estimating 145
• Estimating Plant Investment 145A