QatarEnergy has announced the Final Investment Decision (FID) with Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC (CPChem) to build the Ras Laffan Petrochemicals complex – a US$6bn integrated olefins and polyethylene facility at Ras Laffan Industrial City
The announcement was made in Doha in a special ceremony during which His Excellency Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, the Minister of State for Energy Affairs, the president and CEO of QatarEnergy, and Bruce Chinn, president and CEO of Chevron Phillips Chemical, signed the agreement for a joint venture company to implement the project, wherein QatarEnergy will own a 70% equity share, and CPChem 30%. The signing ceremony was attended by Mark Lashier, president and CEO of Phillips 66, and senior executives from QatarEnergy and CPChem.
QatarEnergy also announced the award of the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for the ethylene plant to SCJV, a joint venture company between Samsung Engineering Company Ltd. of South Korea and CTCI of Taiwan. The EPC contract for the polyethylene plant was awarded to Maire Tecnimont of Italy, while Emerson of the USA was awarded the main automation contract.
The Ras Laffan Petrochemicals complex, expected to begin production in 2026, will consist of an ethane cracker with a capacity of 2.1 million tons of ethylene per annum, making it the largest in the Middle East and one of the largest in the world. It also includes two polyethylene trains with a combined output of 1.7 million tons per annum of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE) polymer products, raising Qatar’s overall petrochemical production capacity to almost 14 million tons per annum.
In remarks at the signing ceremony, HE Al-Kaabi said, “This marks QatarEnergy’s largest investment ever in Qatar’s petrochemicals sector and the first direct investment in 12 years. It will double our ethylene production capacity, and increase our local polymer production from 2.6 to more than 4 million tons per annum, and place the utmost emphasis on sustainable growth and the environment.
“There is no doubt that this cornerstone investment in Ras Laffan Industrial City marks an important milestone in QatarEnergy’s downstream expansion strategy. It will not only facilitate further expansion in the downstream and petrochemical sectors in Qatar, but will also reinforce our integrated position as a major global player in the upstream, LNG, and downstream sectors. This will be further enhanced once the new world-scale petrochemical project in Orange, Texas, in the United States of America comes online in partnership with Chevron Phillips Chemical, executed by our joint venture Golden Triangle Polymers Company.”
This FID comes less than two months after QatarEnergy and Chevron Phillips Chemical took the Final Investment Decision to execute the US$8.5bn Golden Triangle Polymers Plant on the US Gulf Coast in Texas.
