The new plant will mark the Kingdom’s first Polyisobutylene (PIB) plant, construction is expected to begin in February 2019.
Global oil and gas giant, Saudi Aramco and partner Total have recently inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with South Korean petrochemical firm, Daelim to build a new 80,000 tons Polyisobutylene (PIB) plant, which is expected to come on-stream in 2024. For the record, PIB is an expensive chemical product which has a wide range of industrial applications such as in lubricants, adhesives and fuel additives.
As per trusted sources, the PIB plant’s Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) will begin in February 2019 and will be concluded in Q4 2019. Furthermore, the plant will be the Kingdom’ss first PIB product developing plant which will use feedstock from the Amiral complex in Jubail.
According to a press release, Aramco said that the petrochemical facility will give Daelim access to competitive energy and feedstock, along with large infrastructure, to better serve customers in the Middle East and markets across Asia and Europe.
It said that the chemical project will be a key part of the extensive petrochemical facility of Amiral and will be using Daelim’s PIB registered technology to develop a wide range of industrial products from extremely reactive PIB (HR-PIB) to conventional PIB (CPIB).
As per reports, Aramco and other state-owned energy companies, including ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) are expanding their petrochemical and refining capacities as part of efforts to attain added value from each barrel of oil and gas they produce.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading oil and gas exporter, is planning to double its refining capacity from current 5.4 million barrels of oil per day by expanding in the Kingdom and overseas, where it has stakes in refineries in the U.S., China, Japan and South Korea.
