By James Calloway

Hengyi Industries has selected Honeywell for the second phase of its Brunei refinery, lifting the site's capacity target to 20 million tonnes per year, according to Oil & Gas Middle East. The award is the clearest signal yet that the Pulau Muara Besar complex is moving from operating asset to expansion project.

For practitioners, the number to hold onto is the target itself: 20 million tpa. That figure, confirmed in the report of the Honeywell award, sets the scale of the work now in front of the joint venture and its contractors.

What does the Honeywell award cover?

Honeywell comes in on the technology side of Phase II. For a grassroots expansion of this size, that typically places process licensing, control systems, or both inside the US contractor's scope. The report names Honeywell as Hengyi's pick; it does not break down the contract value or the specific unit licensing involved.

That gap matters for anyone pricing the work. A technology selection tells you the design basis is firming. It does not, on its own, tell you the construction schedule, the contractor lineup, or the procurement timeline.

Where does the project sit geographically?

The Hengyi refinery operates on Pulau Muara Besar, an island industrial site off Brunei's coast. The complex is the country's flagship downstream project, built around a Chinese-Bruneian joint venture structure, and it anchors Brunei's push to capture petrochemical value rather than export crude alone.

Phase II, by raising the throughput ambition to 20 million tpa, extends that logic: more barrels converted on-site, more product slots for regional export markets.

Sanctioned work versus stated ambition

Desk discipline requires a line between the two, and this story sits close to it. What the report establishes:

• Hengyi has chosen Honeywell for Phase II work at the Brunei refinery.
• The capacity target for the site now stands at 20 million tonnes per year.

What the report does not establish:

• A final investment decision date for Phase II.
• Engineering, procurement and construction awards.
• A startup window for the expanded capacity.

Readers tracking this project should treat the Honeywell selection as a milestone on the road to sanction, not evidence that sanction has landed.

What changes for contractors and suppliers?

A technology award of this kind usually precedes a wave of follow-on packages: front-end engineering, long-lead equipment, and eventually construction contracts sized to the added tonnes. Suppliers of cracking units, hydrogen capacity, and control infrastructure will watch Hengyi's next announcements closely.

For the regional refining balance, an additional tranche of Southeast Asian capacity in Brunei would arrive into a market where margins reward integrated, petrochemical-heavy configurations — a consideration analysts raise about every new-phase announcement in the region, and one that belongs to them rather than to the press release.

The watch item

The next hard news will be the FID. Until Hengyi and its partners publish an investment figure and a schedule against the 20 million tpa target, the Phase II timeline remains an ambition with a contractor attached.

One sentence: Honeywell is in, the target is 20 million tonnes per year, and the sanction decision is now the thing to watch.