MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroRabigh has brought on-stream its cracker and PE units following an unplanned outage, according to Apic-online.
A Polymerupdate source in Saudi Arabia informed that the company has recently resumed operations at its cracker and PE units. The complex was taken off-stream on May 19, 2016 owing to a power failure.
Located in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, the complex has an ethylene production capacity of 1.6 million mt/year, HDPE production capacity of 300,000 mt/year and LLDPE production capacity of 600,000 mt/year.
As MRC informed previously, in April 2015, Rabigh Refining & Petrochemical Co. (Petro Rabigh) received ownership of the Rabigh Phase II project from Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical, major shareholders in Petro Rabigh, and will now integrate the project into Petro Rabigh's existing refining and petrochemical complex in Rabigh, Saudi Arabia.
The Rabigh II project, expected to cost about USD 8.1-billion, involves expanding an existing ethane cracker and adding production of ethylene propylene rubber, thermoplastic polyolefins, methyl methacrylate monomer, polymethyl methacrylate, low-density polyethylene/ethylene vinyl acetate, paraxylene/benzene, cumene and phenol/acetone. Production facilities are expected to begin operations "one after another, beginning in the first half of 2016," Sumitomo said.
PetroRabigh, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical, has an annual output capacity of 18 million tonnes of refined products and 2.4 million tonnes of petrochemicals. Thus, the complex currently has a cracker to produce 1.3-million t/y of ethylene and 900,000 t/y of propylene, as well as downstream production of polyethylene, polypropylene, propylene oxide, ethylene glycol and butene-1.
MRC