JEDDAH, 19 November — A consortium grouping Halliburton KBR of the United States and Japan’s Chiyoda Corporation and Mitsubishi was chosen yesterday to build a petrochemical plant in the Eastern Province, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The project, whose cost was not specified, is for Jubail United Petrochemical Company (JUPC) and will take some 32 months to complete, SPA said.
The plant in the industrial city of Jubail will have an annual capacity of one million tons of ethylene, 150,000 tons of linear alpha-olephins and 575 tons of ethylene glycol.
The consortium will also have a 50 percent stake in a polyethylene plant at Jubail with a capacity of 800,000 tons a year for the Arabian Petrochemical Company (Petrokemya).
JUPC and Petrokemya are both wholly owned subsidiaries of the Saudi petrochemical giant Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC).
SABIC has 19 subsidiaries, most of them linked with foreign companies, 16 of which are based in Saudi Arabia and three in Bahrain.
In July the group announced half-yearly profits of $400.5 million, down 27.1 percent on the first half of 2000.
