Riyadh — Mubasher: State-run Saudi Aramco and its partner French oil and gas giant Total signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with South Korean petrochemical company Daelim to build the kingdom’s first Polyisobutylene (PIB) plant.
Set to be operational by 2024, the production capacity of the state-of-the-art facility amounts to 80,000 tonnes of polyisobutylene, the world's largest oil producer said in a statement.
PIB is a high value-added chemical product having a wide range of industrial applications such as adhesives, lubricants and fuel additives.
The investment cost of the project wasn’t disclosed.
The agreement is part of the GCC nation’s efforts to prop up Saudi Aramco’s petrochemicals growth strategy.
In October 2018, Aramco, known formally as Saudi Arabian Oil Co., announced beginning an engineering study to build a large petrochemical complex in the Saudi city of Jubail.
“The launch of the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) of the PIB plant will start in February 2019 and will be concluded in Q4 2019. The new petrochemicals facility will be using feedstock from the Amiral complex in Jubail,” according to the statement.
The chemical project will be part of the large-scale petrochemical complex of Amiral, located in the value park, Aramco added.
The project will be using Daelim’s PIB proprietary technology to produce a wide range of products in a single plant, from conventional PIB (CPIB) to highly reactive PIB (HR-PIB).
