Arabian Petrochemical Company (Petrokemya), a wholly owned affiliate of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic), has awarded a lump-sum engineering, procurement and construction turnkey contract to Korean company Samsung Engineering for the third Butene-1 plant.

The facility will be constructed at Al Jubail Industrial City, on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, and completed by the first quarter of 2005.  Plant capacity will be 130,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of butene-1.  The two existing butene-1 plants at Petrokemya already produce 100,000tpy.  After expansion, the affiliate will have a total butene-1 capacity of 230,000tpy.

Vice chairman and CEO of Sabic Mohamed Al Mady said: “This expansion reaffirms Sabic’s commitment to grow its core business, and moves us closer to achieving our vision to become one of the world’s leading global petrochemical companies.  With this additional plant, we are moving closer to our production target of 48 million tpy by 2010.”
Petrokemya and Sabic Engineering & Project Management jointly undertook the work leading to the contract, which was awarded through an international competitive bidding process.

Other products produced by Petrokemya include ethylene, polystyrene, propylene, butadiene, and benzene.