Echem Launches Feasibility Study for $1.5 Billion Petrochemical Complex in Egypt

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Researched by Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Egyptian Petrochemicals Holding Company (Echem) (Cairo, Egypt) has begun a feasibility study for a $1.5 billion complex in Alexandria, Egypt. The complex will be centered on an ethylene unit (PEC 83600126) and a polyethylene unit (PEC 83600127) with a combined production capacity of one million metric tons a year. Technology selection is underway and construction is planned to begin in 2005 with a 2007 target date for completion.

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company (Houston, Texas) is rumored to be an investor in the project, as well as involved in the feasibility study, so their process technology is likely to be selected for the units.

Reports suggest that as much as 80% of the output from the complex will be sold to export markets and the profit date is tagged for three years after initial operations have begun. At the beginning of 2003, Egypt's Petroleum Minister, Sameh Fahmi, proposed a "Master Plan" that would entail luring $10 billion in foreign investments into the petrochemical industry of Egypt. This would establish fourteen petrochemical sites by the end of 2020. The fourteen sites would be broken up into twenty-four projects and fifty units. Not only would the exports create a national wealth, but also foreign investors would be footing a majority of the start-up costs and an estimated 100,000 new jobs would be created.

Within this plan, Egypt hopes to be producing close to fifteen million metric tons a year of petrochemicals by 2021 and earning $7 billion a year. Echem was created in 2002 for this particular purpose, to be the management house for all the projects, companies, approvals, and land acquisitions.

Click the image to the right to view an index of Egyptian chemical processing projects reported by Industrialinfo.com this year totaling nearly $2 billion in capital spending.

Egypt is a prime location to build new petrochemical complexes because of proven natural gas reserves and new discoveries that will contribute greatly to global scale production sites. Egypt's infrastructure is also designed to easily integrate large projects of this magnitude, including roads, railways, ports, utilities and labor force. Egypt is a stable country politically and economically, including security. Egypt is also an ally of the United States, which helps with investment dollars and promoting projects. Egypt is one of the more liberal "Arab States," as compared to Iran and Saudi Arabia, allowing a more free integration of worldwide companies and their employees to work in the country.

For details on industrial capital spending in the Middle East see archived IIR Industry Alert*: Middle East Region Supports Major Industrial Expansion Industrialinfo.com's new Middle East Area industrial market coverage provides you the intelligence needed to penetrate industrial spending activity in the Middle East. An annual product subscription gives you instant access to over 130 active projects within four core industry segments along with monthly delivery of up to 150 new projects annually. As an added incentive, Industrialinfo.com will provide a quarterly forecast analysis to identify future spending trends for the area.

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