Sadara Appoints Labban As CEO
Saudi Arabia�s Sadara Chemical Company announced on 30 September the appointment of Ziad al-Labban as Chief Executive Officer, effective 1 October. Mr Labban succeeds �Ali Abuali, who has retired from the company. Sadara, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and US firm Dow Chemical, said that Mr Labban has 30 years of work experience in the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. From August 2009 to September 2012 he was president and CEO of the kingdom�s Petro Rabigh, which owns and operates a 400,000 b/d capacity integrated refinery and petrochemicals plant at Rabigh. Prior to that he was president and CEO of Saudi Refining in Houston.
Sadara is building one of the world�s largest integrated chemical facilities, costing $20bn with the capacity to produce over 3mn tons/year of high value-added chemical products and performance plastics. It is based around a dual‐feed cracker that will produce 1.5mn t/y of ethylene and 400,000 t/y of propylene. The company recently awarded Japan�s JGC Corporation an engineering, procurement and construction services contract for an aromatics plant that will be one of the key upstream manufacturing units in the Sadara complex (MEES, 28 September).
The first of Sadara�s 26 production units is expected to be brought on-line in 2015, with full plant operation scheduled for 2016. Ahead of Mr Labban�s appointment the Export-Import Bank of the US authorized a $4.975bn direct loan to Sadara for the export of American goods and services required in the construction of the petrochemical complex in Jubail Industrial City II. The export credit agency said that Dow, KBR and ABB are among approximately 70 US exporters involved in the project.
Copyright MEES 2012.
