Saudi Arabia's new 60,000 barrels per day (bpd) gasoline-making unit at its Rabigh refinery will come online between end-September and early-October, a source familiar with the project said on Wednesday. The unit is part of the 400,000-bpd Petro Rabigh refinery, which is linked to the $10 billion joint-venture petrochemical complex between Saudi Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical Co Ltd “This unit is likely to come up in about two months, or thereabouts,” the source said. The complex is able to produce all types of oil products, except gasoline, before the addition of this new project. The gasoline is expected to be consumed by the growing domestic market, but some could even be exported. The upgraded PetroRabigh petrochemical complex will produce 18.4 million tons of oil products, 1.3 million tons of ethylene and 900,000 tons of propylene annually. Fuel oil traders said the addition of the gasoline unit will lead to a drop in fuel oil output. The refinery currently yields about 38 percent of fuel oil, and supplies the bulk of the fuel for power generation in the kingdom. “They will optimize their operations and there will be less fuel oil produced,” a Singapore-based trader said. Saudi Arabia uses rare low-metals fuel oil of the 380-centistoke grade and the lower supply could see residue fuels oil from other Saudi plants diverted for domestic power use, instead of for exports. “It is still unclear if this would mean that they would require more from the spot market, and will they be exporting less,” a trader said.
