Beirut (APD) The Saudi-based private sector company Project Management and Development Company (PMD) has awarded the petrochemical giant Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) and partner firm Scientific Design Company a contract for the development of an ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol plant in Jubail Industrial City in eastern Saudi Arabia.
Considered the largest of its kind in the world, the plant will have an annual production capacity of 700,000 metric tons of monoethylene Glycol and 200,000 metric tons of ethylene oxide, the Kuwait-based Al-Qabas daily reported Monday. But the paper did not specify the value of the deal.
In earlier reports, regional and international media had given a total investment of $3.5 billion for the PMD plans of establishing an integrated complex of a 1.35 million tpa cracker plant and an amines plant for providing a combined 3 million tpa of petrochemical products by 2010. This would qualify the PMD venture as Saudi Arabias largest private sector petrochemical complex.
Under the contract between PMD and the SABIC Scientific Design venture, design works and technical assistance will be provided in addition to startup operating services. Scientific Design will license the technology for ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol manufacturing and supply the industrial catalyst for ethylene oxide to the new plant.
US-based Scientific Design is a company in the development of process technologies for the petrochemical industry, which since 2003 is owned in fifty-fifty partnership between SABIC and the specialized chemicals group, Sd-Chemie, of Munich, Germany.
This move comes in the framework of our strategy for the next twenty years which aims to boost our competitive capacity on the world markets, said Ali Al Khuraimi, vice president of Research and Technology at SABIC.
SABIC which is 70% owned by the government of Saudi Arabia has a growing interest in scientific research and technical development. This interest is in line with the strategic development goals of the country at large, Al Khuraimi added.
Scientific Design has so far granted more than 90 ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol licenses in 25 countries worldwide. Six of these licenses were awarded to projects in Saudi Arabia. [FC-TS]
By Shikrallah Nakhoul
APD (Arab Press Digest) 2005
