Fluor announced that it was awarded a FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) contract for a new refinery to be built in the Foreign Trade Zone near the Port of Brownsville in Texas, USA. The project owner is America First Refining (AFR), and the contract was reportedly recognized in Fluor’s first-quarter 2026 results. The refining capacity is approximately 168,000 barrels per day (b/d), and the facility is planned to process light shale crude oil produced in the Permian and Eagle Ford regions. The refinery is being promoted as the first new grassroots refinery built in the United States since 1976, with groundbreaking scheduled for the second quarter of 2026.
America First Refining is pursuing a greenfield refinery project in the Foreign Trade Zone near the Port of Brownsville, with Fluor handling the FEED engineering and design. The crude to be processed is light shale oil from the Permian and Eagle Ford regions, reflecting an effort to expand nearby refining capacity in response to rising U.S. shale oil production. One notable feature of the project is a 20-year long-term offtake agreement signed with India’s Reliance Industries, covering the purchase of 1.2 billion barrels over 20 years, with the contract reportedly valued at approximately $125 billion.
The refinery’s refining capacity is confirmed at approximately 168,000 b/d. The offtake agreement with Reliance Industries covers 1.2 billion barrels over 20 years, with a reported contract value of approximately $125 billion. Groundbreaking is scheduled for the second quarter of 2026. Some media outlets have described the project as a “$300 billion-scale, largest-ever energy project,” which appears to be a rhetorical figure that includes the total transaction value of the 20-year offtake agreement, while the actual construction cost was separately reported at approximately $3 billion. However, precisely what each of these figures refers to depends on how individual sources have described them, and this cannot be definitively confirmed.
This project carries considerable symbolic significance as the first new refinery built in the United States in half a century, and is understood to be driven by the need to expand refining infrastructure to process increased domestic shale oil production. Securing an initial offtake buyer through a long-term agreement with a major overseas refiner is also cited as a notable feature of the project.
In the United States, new refinery construction has been largely absent for decades, with refining capacity expansion instead driven mainly by upgrades and expansions of existing facilities; this Brownsville project is cited as a greenfield investment case that stands in contrast to that trend. Securing a large overseas offtake buyer in advance through a 20-year long-term agreement is regarded as a typical commercial structure that new refinery projects can use to reduce early-stage financing risk. For a global EPC firm like Fluor, this FEED award could translate into a track record for a major refinery project should it lead to a subsequent EPC contract, making it a point of comparison with the activities of other major engineering firms competing in the refining and petrochemical EPC market, such as Bechtel, KBR, and Technip Energies. While the refining sector has recently seen upgrade and energy-transition-linked investment as the dominant trend rather than new greenfield investment, this project is cited as an example showing that demand for new refining capacity still exists in regions with abundant shale oil production.
Whether the groundbreaking scheduled for the second quarter of 2026 actually takes place, and how the subsequent EPC contract will be structured (single award or consortium) following completion of Fluor’s FEED work, are among the first items to watch. Given the scale of the project, the final financing structure and the timing of financial close also warrant confirmation. In addition, how the offtake agreement with Reliance Industries will be reflected in actual supply terms once the facility is operational, and how the relationship between the reported “$300 billion” total project value and the actual construction cost is further clarified, are also cited as points to watch.