MOSCOW (MRC) -- S-Oil's new residue upgrading complex (RUC) and olefin downstream complex (ODC) has been inaugurated at the company's Onsan Refinery in Ulsan, South Korea, according to Apic-online.
The project, which cost around USD4-billion, involved construction of a plant to upgrade low-value residue oil to high-value gasoline and propylene. The propylene is to be used for the production of 405,000 t/y of polypropylene (PP) and 300,000 t/y of propylene oxide.
Separately, S-Oil and Saudi Aramco, a majority shareholder in S-Oil, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on a USD6-billion steam cracker and olefin downstream project. Completion is expected by 2024.
PCN earlier reported that the project would include a 1.5-million-t/y steam cracker, which would produce ethylene and other basic petrochemicals from naphtha and refinery off-gas.
The downstream units would include the production of polyethylene and PP.
As part of the MoU, Aramco will provide its Thermal Crude-to-Chemicals technology, "shifting S-Oil's focus from 'oil to chemicals' to better position the company in the future energy market," Aramco noted.
We remind that, as MRC wrote earlier, in January 2019, S-Oil Corp, South Korea’s third-biggest refiner by capacity, said that refining margins are expected to improve in 2019, boosted by growing diesel demand.
MRC