A petrochemical plant, jointly built in Saudi Arabia by Sumitomo Chemical Co. and Saudi Arabian Oil Co., has begun producing ethylene and propylene, the Japanese company said Thursday. Completed at a cost of some $10 billion, the Saudi Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company (Petro Rabigh) plant is capable of producing 1.3 million tons of ethylene a year and 900,000 tons of propylene, which make it one of the largest petrochemical plants in the world. The plant is expected to export its products to China and other Asian economies where demand is increasing, company officials said. Sumitomo Chemical and Saudi Aramco began building the plant in Rabigh in March 2006 through their join venture, Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Co., which is owned 37.5 percent by the comprehensive Japanese chemical maker. Petro Rabigh has announced that it has started its new ethane cracker successfully. The mega refinery project's cracker will provide ethylene feedstock to the different petrochemical plants of the project, including the production of the HDPE, LDPE and MEG. The total production for the plant is 1.3 million tons per annum (tpa). The new refining facilities such as the vacuum distillation unit (VDU) and vacuum gasoil hydrotreater (VGOHDT) have been put in operation in preparation to startup the new high olefin fluidized catalytic cracking unit (HOFCC), which will crack the hydro-treated VGO at a capacity of 92,000 barrels per day (bpd) to produce 900,000 tpa of propylene and 59,000 bpd of gasoline.
