Project Profile
Value: US$20 billion (estimated)
Location: Yanbu or Jubail, Saudi Arabia
Capacity: 18 million tonnes per year (300,000 bpd)
Construction start: 2018
Start-up Year: 2025
Aramco and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) signed a heads of agreement in June 2016 to co-operate on developing a plant converting crude oil directly to chemicals. The new technology skips the refining stage realising significant efficiency savings in energy and emissions. The project helps Saudi Arabia diversify its energy mix, expand further into the petrochemical chain and use less gas in the process.
Saudi Aramco has named polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), xylene and benzene as among the intended products while SABIC explained the complex would encompass two or three flexi-crackers processing crude, naphtha and gas feedstocks.
Bids for the project management consultancy (PMC) package were submitted in October 2017 while pre-FEED and FEED contracts were due in late September. The project’s lengthy timeframe hints that FEED studies are not expected to be completed until late 2019. Final investment decision (FID) is likely by the end of 2019.
Operators:
Saudi Aramco
Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC)