Saudi Aramco and Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical will transfer ownership of the planned US$8.5bn petrochemical facility to their joint venture Petro Rabigh in Q4 2014
The new facility — Rabigh II — will be an extension of Petro Rabigh’s existing petrochemical plant and is expected to increase output and introduce higher-margin products like ethylene propylene rubber, thermoplastic polyolefin, methyl methacrylate monomer and polymethyl methacrylate, among other products.
The project, located on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, had received a formal go-ahead from the parent firms in 2012. Petro Rabigh has previously said that the facility is due to come online in 2016.
Both Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical would continue to guarantee finance needed to build the project with each putting in around US$975mn. The rest would come from project financing, the Japanese firm’s president Masakazu Tokura said in November 2013.
Petro Rabigh’s existing plant can produce an annual 18mn tonnes of refined products and 2.4mn tonnes of petrochemical products.
