Saudi Aramco invests in aromatics projects

As part of its strategy to leverage existing assets and diversify the company’s chemicals production, Saudi Aramco is planning to launch several aromatics projects in Saudi Arabia. Fayez Al Sharef, the state-owned group’s chemicals director, said the company plans to include aromatics production at refineries in Ras Tanura and Jazan; Saudi Aramco is also studying the possibility of setting up an aromatics project at its refinery in Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast. The aromatics unit that will be built at the Ras Tanura refinery will have the capacity to produce 1.1 million tons per year (mtpy) of paraxylene (PX) and benzene. Al Sharef said the aromatics units are part of the company’s clean fuels program, and involves recovering some of the aromatics from the refinery’s gasoline pool. Another aromatics unit will be built at the group’s 400,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery project in Jazan; the unit will have a combined capacity of more than 1 mtpy of PX and benzene. A joint venture with France’s Total is also building an aromatics complex in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Aramco Total Refining and Petrochemical Company (Satorp) project is expected to begin operations in the second half of 2013 and will have the capacity to produce 700,000 tons per year (tpy) of PX and 140,000 tpy of benzene.
The company has another petrochemical project in Jubail: Sadara Chemical, which is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and the U.S. company, Dow Chemical. The 1.5 mtpy cracker project is part of Sadara’s US$20 billion petrochemicals project, and is expected to begin operations in early 2015. In China, Saudi Aramco has formed a joint venture with China’s Sinopec and the U.S. producer ExxonMobil. The joint venture, Fujian Refining & Petrochemical (FREP), is finalizing a study to expand the complex in Fujian. FREP has the capacity to produce 800,000 tpy of ethylene and 800,000 tpy of polyethylene (PE), as well as other products including polypropylene (PP) and aromatics. Al Sharef said Saudi Aramco’s partners are considering the possibility of debottlenecking the cracker and adding capacity for PE, PP and ethylene glycol (EG). (June 25, 2012)