MOSCOW (MRC) -- Advanced Petrochemical Co. (Jubail, Saudi Arabia) says it has received approval for a new petrochemical complex in Jubail, including a steam cracker, for the production of 2.4 million metric tons/year of ethylene, propylene, and aromatics, reported Chemweek.
All units at the new complex are scheduled to start up in the fourth quarter of 2025, it says. No investment figure has been given.
The facility will produce 1.15 MMt/y of ethylene, 850,000 metric tons/year of propylene, and 400,000 metric tons/year of aromatics, fuels, and their derivatives, the company says in a Saudi stock exchange announcement.
Advanced Global Investment Co. (AGIC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Advanced, says it has received approval from Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry “for allocating the required quantities of feedstock to set up a petrochemical complex project in Jubail Industrial City using cracking technology.” The company will "select leading and most efficient technologies, in energy and feedstock consumption, to produce ethylene and propylene and their derivatives,” it says.
Advanced Polyolefins Co. (APOC), a joint venture of AGIC and SK Gas Petrochemical (SKGP), a unit of SK Gas (Seoul, South Korea), is already underway with plans to build and operate a 7.05-billion Saudi riyals (USD1.87 billion) propane dehydrogenation (PDH) and polypropylene (PP) complex at Jubail, with a design capacity for 843,000 metric tons/year of propylene and 800,000 metric tons/year of PP. Advanced said in December 2020 that construction would start in 2021, with start-up scheduled for the second half of 2024. Saudi Aramco will provide propane feedstock on a long-term basis to the PDH plant. AGIC holds an 85% share of the APOC JV, with SKGP owning the rest.
AGIC also signed in December long-term offtake agreements with three firms for the sale of PP totaling almost 620,000 metric tons/year. Agreements were signed with Vinmar International and with Tricon Dry Chemicals - part of Tricon Energy - for 250,000 metric tons/year each, and with Mitsubishi Corp. for 120,000 metric tons/year.
Advanced Petrochemical already operates a PDH plant producing 455,000 metric tons/year of propylene and a 450,000-metric tons/year PP unit at Jubail.
As MRC informed before, Advanced Petrochemical Company has shut its PDH unit and PP plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia for maintenance. Thus, these plants were takenloffstream from 11 March, 2021. PP plant is aimed to restart on 27 March, whereas PDH unit is to come back on-line on 5 April.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 241,030 tonnes in January 2021 versus 217,890 tonnes a year earlier. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
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