GS Engineering and Construction Co. signed an MOU with Sonatrach, a state oil company in Algeria, on Oct. 29 to set up a joint-venture construction company in Algeria, which would help GS E&C expand its operations in North Africa. 

Sonatrach is Algeria’s largest state oil company engaged in a number of areas of the petroleum sector including crude oil drilling, oil refining, gas production, transportation of petroleum products, and production of petrochemical products with an annual turnover of $56.1 billion in 2010.

GS E&C plans to go further and sign another MOU to invest in a petrochemical project in a joint venture with Sonatrach to speed up its advancement into African countries. Inimasa, the Spanish company that the GS Group took over, has been operating soft water refining facilities in Algeria turning out 300,000 tons of soft water annually.

In the meantime, a GS E&C-led consortium won the IPRH UHV oil refinery plant project worth $1 billion in Thailand from PTT on a turnkey basis, taking charge of design, purchase, and construction, the company said recently.

GS E&C will take over 60 percent of the project, while SK Construction will control 40 percent. The UHV plant is designed to produce light oil such as gasoline, kerosene, and diesel from crude oil, and produce ethylene and propylene°™raw materials for petrochemical products°™with the residual heavy oil left after refining the light oil products.

The plant will be built in the Rayong Industrial Complex located 180 km southeast of Bangkok and GS E&C will take charge of building the desulphurization and heavy oil cracking facilities for the project, in addition to the recovery processes. SK Construction will build hydrogen production facilities, sulfur treatment facilities, and storage tanks, among others, all aimed at completion in August 2015. The projected plant when completed will be able to produce 300,000 tons of propylene, ethylene, and naphtha.

Officials of GS Construction said the project is a win-win for everybody involved as it was won through a mutually cooperative system phasing out excessive competition among Korean builders for overseas projects. 

GS E&C’s Xi Apartments Stress Affluence and Style

The home network system with super-speed optical communication solutions, total security system, and the wireless computer for apartments are just a few of the conveniences that can only come with the “Xi” brand apartments built by GS Engineering and Construction Co. based on the idea that high-tech systems for an affluent lifestyle, such as three-dimensional showers and cube benches in parks, make apartments look more stylish.

GS Construction has been conducting an ad campaign for its Xi apartments since last year titled “Made in Xi.” The company follows up the ad on the Xi apartments with ads on a “ubiquitous life,” “smart life,” and “high-tech life” to show that Xi apartments can provide them.

Visitors to Xi apartments can feel what the award-winning, globally-famous designers can do for their lives.

The basic philosophy of the Xi brand has been to provide the maximum quality of living space to whoever wants it, and in doing so they had to discover lifestyle trends among consumers and develop brand new lifestyles with high-tech systems and segregated designs.

The company upgraded the AS centers to “Xian Lounges” for customers to use as luxurious resting facilities. What has stood out among the Xi customer services has been the use of smartphones to provide customer service in real time, with 231 of them in service at the 40 Xi AS centers around the country starting with the Ilsan Xi center in Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province.

The company also developed the Xi App, the first integrated application in the construction industry, to transmit updated information to customers and Xi apartment residents through smartphones and tablet PCs.