US engineering and construction company KBR has signed an agreement with NIPIneftegas to set up a joint venture in Kazakhstan. The companies did not disclose the size of their proposed stakes in the jv.

“We are confident that this strong jv will help to realize our ambition to create a world-class Kazakhstan-based engineering company,” said Igor Gershtanskiy, NIPIneftegas’s general director.

The new company KBR-NIPILLP will provide engineering, procurement, design and related support services for projects across the upstream, midstream and downstream oil and gas sectors.

It will also prepare technical requirements for all stages of a project, including management, contract supervision, planning and cost control, along with training and developing local Kazakh workers.

KBR has been involved in various projects in the country since 1993.

Until last week, Kazakhstan was also the location for a proposed ethane cracker and world-scale polyethylene complex for Borealis. The company announced on May 19 that it was discontinuing the project, which would have included two PE plants based on Borstar technology.

The decision, it said, came after “a thorough assessment of all aspects of the prospective venture and impacted by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the increased uncertainty of future market assumptions”.

In separate news, KBR has announced the successful commissioning of an ammonia plant for Chambal Fertilizers and Chemicals Ltd. (CFCL) in Gadepan, India. The plant, the third for CFCL, uses KBR’s Purifier technology and has a capacity of 2,200 t/d.