Three Sabic petrochemical projects in the industrial cities of Jubail and Yanbu are expected to go on stream this year, the company reported.

They had been launched by Yanbu National Petrochemical Company (Yansab), Eastern Petrochemical Company (Sharq) and Saudi European Petrochemical Company (Ibn Zahr).  
The Yansab complex in Yanbu will have an annual capacity of approximately four million tonnes.
“The project is well on track. Most of the engineering and construction work is completed and we are now focusing efforts on final construction work,” said a Sabic spokesman.
Yansab will produce ethylene, ethylene glycol, high density polyethylene, low linear density polyethylene, polypropylene, butene 1, butene 2, MTBE and BTX.
The company is owned 51 per cent by Sabic and 14 per cent by other Saudi and GCC founding shareholders while 35 per cent of the shares are publicly traded.
The Sharq expansion project will add 2.8 million tonnes of products by the end of 2008 and enhance the company’s position as the world’s single largest producer of ethylene glycol.
Sharq is a 50/50 Sabic joint venture formed with a consortium of Japanese companies led by Mitsubishi Corporation
The expansion at Ibn Zahr, which is a joint venture involving shareholders Sabic (80 per cent) and Ecofuel-Italy and Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation (10 per cent each), will add half a million tonnes with a  Polypropylene-3 line in the last quarter of this year.
And very recently (early June 2008), Sabic announced that the fifth expansion project of the Saudi Methanol Company (Ar-Razi) had come on stream. The expansion has added 1.7 million tonnes to Ar-Razi’s methanol production capacity. The company is a 50/50 Sabic joint venture formed in 1971 with a consortium of Japanese companies led by Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company.
Meanwhile, Saudi Kayan Petrochemical Company (Saudi Kayan) entered into $6 billion financing arrangements for 15 years with a group of banks and financial institutions to finance part of the cost of its new complex in Jubail Industrial City. The facility will be the world’s largest integrated petrochemical complex.
Saudi Kayan is scheduled to go on stream in the fourth quarter of 2010 with a total annual capacity of approximately 6 million tpy of a variety of petrochemical products including ethylene, propylene, polyethylene, polypropylene and ethylene glycol.
The world’s largest integrated petrochemical complex, it will also manufacture a series of specialised products that will be produced in Saudi Arabia for the first time. They include aminoethanols, aminomethyls, dimethylformamide, dimethyl-ethanol, dimethylethanolamine, ethoxy-lates, polycarbonate and acetone.
Mutlaq Hamad Al-Morished, Saudi Kayan chairman and Sabic vice president for corporate finance, stressed Sabic’s keenness to diversify the sources of financing for its projects and to optimise the utilisation of available funding sources, especially Islamic financing.
Sabic holds 35 per cent of the shareholding in Saudi Kayan with a private shareholder, Al Kayan Petrochemical Company, holding a further 20 per cent. The remaining 45 per cent is held by Saudi shareholders following an initial public offering last year.