RIYADH, 24 July 2004 — Security concerns notwithstanding, two more petrochemical projects are to be set up in the industrial township of Jubail in 2006 and 2007 respectively with technical collaboration from Germany and Japan.
The first project is joint venture between Jubail United Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), and Linde AG, Wiesbaden of Germany to build a linear alpha olefins plant. Announcing the details of the project, Mohammad S. Al-Motawa general manager, corporate communications at SABIC, said the contract was worth $200 million.
According to Uwe Wolfinger of Linde AG’s Corporate Communications Center, it is the first sabline linear alpha olefins plant contract awarded to Linde by SABIC.
It will be a turnkey contract for the engineering, procurement and construction of the plant.
The facility will be the first of its kind utilizing the alpha sabline technology jointly developed by SABIC and Linde.
He said the facility will be constructed at Jubail Industrial City on the United Petrochemical Company site and is scheduled for completion by the third quarter of 2006. The plant capacity will be 150,000 metric tons of linear.
Wolfinger pointed out that in response to the rising global demand for polymers, plasticizers, lubricants and detergents, SABIC has developed groundbreaking new process technology for the competitive production of linear alpha olefins.
“As one of the world’s leading industrial and petrochemical manufacturers, SABIC is strongly positioned to take advantage of this demand and to become a key supplier of linear alpha olefins to markets in the Middle East and around the world,” he said adding that the annual growth rate for olefins is four to six percent.
There are more than 200 facilities worldwide that produce olefins or ethylenes, said Wolfinger. About 20 percent of these facilities were set up by Linde. The so-called alpha-sabline process will be used for the first time.
The second project involving JGC Corporation of Japan and its subsidiary JGC Arabia will be owned and operated by Jubail Chevron Phillips Company (JCP), a spokesman for JGC announced. The contract covers the engineering, procurement, and construction for an integrated styrene facility in Jubail.
When completed in 2007, the styrene facility will be used to produce a wide variety of polymers with diverse end uses that include packaging, automotive applications, electronic parts, rubber articles, paper, tires, luggage, construction materials, carpeting, and toys.
The industrial townships of Jubail and Yanbu, home to the biggest petrochemical projects of SABIC, remain under a state of heightened security following this year’s terrorist attacks in the Kingdom that targeted strategic petrochemical locations.
According to A. Pampanini, author of a forthcoming book on Jubail and Yanbu, the two townships together account for around seven percent of the Kingdom’s GDP.
