Production levels at the Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (GPIC) hit record highs in 2010.
The company was able to produce 429,000 tonnes of ammonia, 629,000 tonnes of urea and 417,000 tonnes of methanol to bring the total output to 1.47 mn tonnes of petrochemicals, GIPC president Abdul Rahman Jawahery was reported as saying by Trade Arabia.
On the export front, the company saw considerable gains over previous years with exports hitting 60,000 tonnes of ammonia, 611,000 tonnes of urea and 427,000 tonnes of methanol to bring the total exports to 1.098 mn tonnes of petrochemicals
Jawahery said that the CO2 unit, which was launched by GPIC in December 2009, and was the first plant of its kind in the Middle East, successfully completed its first year of operations and contributed to increasing the output of the methanol and urea plants by approximately 60,000 tonnes during the year and with a 22 per cent return on investment.
The company is looking at setting up new projects as soon as the required quantities of natural gas were available for any new expansion plans. Production operations were high in 2010 as the company's plants continued operating without any disruption as good safety standards helped achieve excellent performances.
The reason for this was the completing of the regular shutdown maintenance system early in 2010 which helped increase reliability levels in plants and prevented any breakdowns or disruption of production operations.
