Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical (Petro Rabigh) is expected to complete its 275,000 ton/year phenol project in Rabigh in 2014, an official with US-based engineering company KBR said Thursday. John Derbyshire, president of KBR's technology division, said the company is providing the basic engineering and technology for the project, and is working with Japanese engineering and construction firm JGC Corp. on the front-end engineering and design (FEED) package. The phenol project forms part of Petro Rabigh's plans to widen the product slate and debottleneck the ethane cracker at its refinery and petrochemicals complex. Petro Rabigh is likely to bring its Phase II expansion project on stream by 2015, Ziad Al-Labban, the company's President and CEO, said earlier. "The Phase II project will double our existing capacity," Al-Labban said at the recent second GPCA (Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association) Plastics Summit. "Currently, the front engineering is progressing in Japan and we anticipate the final investment be made by end of this year," he added. Petro Rabigh is a joint venture (JV) between state-owned Saudi Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical. Its complex in Rabigh includes a 1.3m ton/year ethane cracker and a 700,000 ton/year monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant. The facility also includes a 600,000 ton/year linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant, a 300,000 ton/year high-density PE (HDPE) unit and a 700,000 ton/year polypropylene (PP) plant. Derbyshire said KBR is bidding for some of the EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) packages within the Petro Rabigh expansion project, known as Petro Rabigh II.
