InterviewGPCA '14: Sadara complex now 75% complete – CEO

DUBAI (ICIS)--Sadara Chemical Co’s $20bn world-scale petrochemical complex in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, is 75% complete and is on track to come completely on stream within 2016, the company’s top executive said on Sunday.
 

“We are on schedule, on budget, to come on stream in the second half of next year,” Ziad S Al-Labban, CEO of Sadara, told ICIS on the sidelines of 9th annual Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA) Forum that is being held in Dubai on 23-25 November.
 

“Actually as of October 75% of our project [complex] is complete. We are actually starting to commission the steam generation portion of the project,” he added.

Comprising of 26 manufacturing units, the Sadara complex – the first in the Middle East to use refinery liquids like naphtha as feedstock – is expected to produce more than 3m tonnes/year of high value-added chemical products and performance plastics.

The complex will include a world-scale cracker and production units for polyurethanes (isocyanates and polyether polyols), propylene oxide (PO), propylene glycol, elastomers, linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), low density polyethylene (LDPE), glycol ethers and amines.

“And once we start beginning the production, we will be producing for the first time in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 14 new products from 14 new plants,” Al-Labban said.

“What it will do is it will attract secondary and tertiary manufacturing entities to come to Saudi Arabia,” he added.

Al-Labban said Sadara was in negotiations with nearly 20 companies to set up downstream facilities at a chemical park in the same Jubail industrial site where the complex is located.

“So everything is falling into place. We are bringing in products that are not available,” Al-Labban added.

Once products start flowing in out of the complex, Dow Chemical will market them using it existing infrastructure, Al-Labban said.

“As a result of doing that and we don’t have to establish anything new [for marketing],” he explained.

Sadara is a joint venture between US-based Dow Chemical and state-owned energy firm Saudi Aramco. Saudi Aramco owns a 70% stake in the petrochemical project, while Dow holds the remaining 30%.

“By establishing the Chemical Park we are inviting manufacturing companies to come to Saudi Arabia, we don’t have to go after them and compete. So we are doing it at both ends,” he added.