New Chemicals and Plastics Plants to be Set Up in Qatar and Saudi Arabia

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Middle East petrochemical and plastics projects are continuing to develop, despite the fall in commodity and raw material prices in the credit crunch, with new plants to be set up in Mesaieed, Qatar and in Rabigh and Al-Jubail in Saudi Arabia. With large available feedstock and equally large investments leading to economies of scale, the region is well placed to take a large share of the global petrochemical growth.

State-owned Qatar Petrochemical Company (Qapco) (Doha, Qatar) is setting up a low-density polyethylene plant with a capacity of 250,000 tons per year at an estimated cost of $410 million. The plant will use excess ethylene produced by Qapco's ethylene cracker in the Ras Laffan Industrial Complex and other sources owned by the firm. It is scheduled for commercial production in the first quarter of 2011. The plant will be constructed adjacent to three other plants owned by Qapco in Mesaieed Industrial City and will be able to share infrastructure with these existing plants.

Qapco recently invited bids for the engineering, procurement and construction contracts for the project. Among the firms that have placed bids are Uhde GmbH (Dortmund, Germany), a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp AG (FRA:THK) (Dusseldorf, Germany), Maire Tecnimont SpA (BIT:MT) (Milan, Italy), and Simon Carves Limited (Manchester, United Kingdom), a part of the Punj Lloyd Group (Gurgaon, Haryana).

In Saudi Arabia, Global Petrochemical Marketing Company (GPMC) (Bahrain) plans to invest $100 million to produce 175,000 tons per year of thermoplastic compounds at a new plant in the 240-hectare Rabigh Conversion Industrial Park. GPMC will build the new plant in a joint venture with Saudi Aramco (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia), Sumitomo Chemical Company Limited (TYO:4005) (Tokyo, Japan) and Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company (SAU:2380) (Rabigh, Saudi Arabia), also known as Petro Rabigh. Petro Rabigh is a joint venture of Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemicals. The Rabigh Conversion Industrial Park is located next to Petro Rabigh's existing petrochemical and refining complex. The King Abdul Aziz International Airport and the Jeddah Islamic Port are within 180 kilometers of the industrial park and provide excellent connectivity for exports to Europe as well as local transportation of goods.

In another development in Saudi Arabia, Shaw Group Incorporated (NYSE:SGR) (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) secured a contract to provide front-end engineering and design services for a new 200,000-ton-per-year acrylonitrile butadiene styrene synthetic rubber plant to be built in Al-Jubail. The Shaw Group, which has also secured the engineering, procurement and construction contract, will provide equipment to be installed at the plant. Emulsion technology for the ABS product will be supplied by SABIC Innovative Plastics Technologies Incorporated (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), a former division of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) that was sold to Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) (Riyadh) for $11.6 billion in 2007.

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