As one that will operate one of the world’s largest petrochemical complexes, the $5 billion Yanbu National Petrochemical Company (Yansab) is set to be the bright star of Yanbu Industrial City.

By mid-2008, the complex will contribute some 4 million tonnes per year (tpy) of products to Sabic’s capacity and raise the company’s international profile in the industry yet again.
Sabic chairman Prince Saud bin Abdullah bin Thunayan Al-Saud has described Yansab as “a major contribution to the petrochemical industry locally and globally and particularly to Yanbu Industrial City.” Prince Saud is also chairman of the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu.
The yield from Yansab at full capacity will be close to a 10th of Sabic’s current annual output of 49.1 million tonnes.
Yansab, which Sabic owns 55 per cent, has been designed to produce 1.3 million tpy of ethylene, 900,000 tpy of polyethylene, 400,000 tpy of polypropylene, 700,000 tpy of ethylene glycol, 250,000 tpy of benzene, xylene and toluene and 100,000 tpy of butane 1 and 2.
As much as $3.5 billion will be forthcoming from local, regional and international financial institutions. The scramble to participate in the funding reflected the business community’s confidence in the project.
Foster Wheeler Energy Ltd was assigned responsibility for overall programme management. Fluor Ltd of Camberley, Surrey, England, was entrusted with designing, engineering, procuring activities and planning the construction of the utilities and offsite facilities, pipelines and port storage and the provision of training.
Among the plants ready or on the verge of completion in Yanbu is Safra Company’s facility to produce more than 100,000 tpy of BTX aromatics. Safra awarded a licensing, engineering and technical services contract to GTC for the GT-BTX technology. The plant will utilise feed from both a zeoformer unit and a traditional naphtha reforming unit.
Safra also selected Axens Aromising continuous catalytic regenerative (CCR) reforming technology for producing 10,000 bpd aromatic hydrocarbons that will be further processed in downstream units.
Saudi Arabian National Petrochemical Company (NatPet) is building a plant to produce approximately 400,000 tpy of propylene from propane for the production of plastics.  The plant, for which Lurgi AG is providing the engineering, hardware and construction, is set for commissioning at the end of this year. Included in the NatPet project is a polypropylene plant.
At Ibn Rushd, Sabic has initiated a Pet conversion and de-bottlenecking project which should be completed in the third quarter of this year. The project will contribute an annual capacity exceeding 300,000 tonnes of bottle-grade chips (BGC) and it includes conversion of all polymer lines to produce BGCs. “This annual capacity increase/conversion will further enance Sabic’s position in the regional marketplace,” said the president of Ibn Rushd, Awadh Al Maker. The conversion project requires installation of two new solid state polymerisation units for producing BGC from the de-bottlenecked polymer lines.
An air separation unit commissioned by National Industrialisation Gases Company (Gas) will be ready in April 2008. Working on the project are Linde AG and Linarco Saudi Arabia. Production capacity will be 3,000 tonnes per day of oxygen.
Yanbu is also the site of a significant Saudi Aramco project for an export refinery that will enable the oil giant to expand its role as both an upstream and a downstream exporter of hydrocarbons.
The 400,000 bpd full-conversion refinery will process Arabian Heavy crude and produce high-quality, ultra-low sulphur refined products that meet current and future US and European product specifications. An MoU to conduct a detailed evaluation for the proposed refinery was signed between Saudi Aramco and ConocoPhillips in May 2006.The project is targeted to startup in 2011.