South Korea’s Daelim to build polyisobutylene plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia

A new state-of-the-art polyisobutylene (PIB) plant will come on-stream in 2024, using Daelim’s PIB proprietary technology to produce a wide range of products in a single plant, from conventional PIB (CPIB) to highly reactive PIB (HR-PIB), in Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

PIB is a high value-added chemical product and has a wide range of industrial applications such as adhesives, lubricants and fuel additives.

Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil and gas company, together with its partner Total announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Daelim, a South Korean petrochemical company, which is part of the South Korean conglomerate Daelim Industrial Co. Under the MoU, Daelim will build a new 80,000-ton PIB plant, with the launch of the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) to start this month. The FEED is expected to be finished by the fourth quarter.

The new petrochemicals facility will be using feedstock from the Amiral complex in Jubail, located on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast. It is the first time that the PIB product will be developed in Saudi Arabia.

This agreement is another step to drive Saudi Aramco’s petrochemicals growth strategy. This follows Saudi Aramco’s announcement in October 2018 to launch an engineering study to build a large petrochemical complex in Jubail.

The facility’s location in Saudi Arabia will give Daelim access to competitive feedstock and energy, with large infrastructure, to better serve customers in the Middle East and markets across Europe and Asia.

This specialty chemical project will be part of the large-scale petrochemical complex of Amiral, located in the value park.