ALKHOBAR: PetroRabigh has started to bring its ethane cracker back into operation after fixing a water leak, the company said on Wednesday.

PetroRabigh said it had fixed the leak in cooling water pipes related to the unit, which was brought offline on Oct. 16 as a precautionary measure.

The company, a joint venture between oil giant Saudi Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical, did not specify when the cracker would again be operating at pre-outage levels.

The unit has an annual production capacity of 1.3 million tons of ethylene. PetroRabigh has an integrated 400,000-barrel per day oil refinery and can produce an annual 18 million tons of refined products and 2.4 million tons of petrochemicals.