Saudi inks $4.3b petrochemical deal with Japan’s Sumitomo
AFP, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia on Sunday signed an agreement with Japan's Sumitomo Chemical Co. setting the stage for the development of a 4.3-billion-dollar refining and petrochemical complex on the Red Sea by the end of 2008. The complex in Rabigh "will be the largest such facility ever built at a single stroke, and continues Saudi Aramco's tradition of developing ... and operating massive industrial 'megaprojects'," said Abdullah Jumah, president and CEO of the state-owned Saudi oil giant. The memorandum of understanding he signed with his Sumitomo Chemical counterpart, Hiromasa Yonekura, at Aramco headquarters in Dhahran in the oil-rich Eastern Province includes as the next step a joint feasibility study into the project to produce a total of 2.2 million tons of olefins, along with large volumes of gasoline and other refined products, the Saudi company said. "The bedrock of this agreement is the development of our Rabigh refinery into a world-class integrated refining and petrochemical complex," Jumah said. Saudi Aramco operates the topping refinery which has a nominal crude distillation capacity of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd).
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