MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell has signed a deal with Iraq worth USD11 billion to build a petrochemicals plant in the southern oil hub of Basra, boosting the country's aim to become a major regional energy player and diversify its income, reported Reuters.
Industry Minister Nasser al-Esawi told a news conference the Nibras complex, which is expected to come online within five to six years, would make his country the largest petrochemical producer in the Middle East.
Iraq, which relies on oil for more than 90% of its revenue, has been hit hard by the steep fall in global oil prices since June, with Brent crude now hovering around USD50 a barrel.
"The Nibras complex will be one of the largest (foreign) investments (in Iraq) and the most important in the petrochemical sector in the Middle East," Esawi said.
He said the factory would produce 1.8 million tonnes of petrochemical products per year.
A Shell spokesman told Reuters Iraq's cabinet had authorised the project on Jan 13. Company officials declined to confirm the size or types of output expected from the facility.
We remind that, as MRC wrote before, Shell restarted its ethylene cracker in Bukom, Singapore, last week following a three-month maintenance and expansion works to raise the unit's capacity. Shell said the expansion work would increase the capacity of the cracker by 20%. The cracker originally had a capacity of 800,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of ethylene. The cracker uses a range of feedstock including naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to produce ethylene, a building block for plastics.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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