Petronas to build 300,000 bpd refinery

Petronas, Malaysia’s state-run oil and gas company, announced that it will build a US$20 billion refinery and petrochemicals plant with a 300,000 barrel per day (bpd) capacity. The new Refinery and Petrochemicals Integrated Development (RAPID) complex should help the company compete in the growing Asian specialty chemical market. Shamsul Azhar Abbas, chief executive of Petronas, said “The whole Asian region is going to be short of high specialty products, so this is meant for the region.” The RAPID complex will be built in the southern Johor state near Singapore. The project which will bring Petronas production capacity from 6.2 million tons per year to 10 million tons is expected to be complete by the end of 2016. (May 13,2011)