Saudi Aramco, Sumitomo To Transfer Project Ownership To PetroRabigh

Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical will transfer ownership of a planned SAR32 billion ($8.5 billion) petrochemical facility to their joint venture PetroRabigh, the venture said on Sunday.

The new facility, known as Rabigh II, is to be built as an expansion of PetroRabigh’s existing petrochemical plant, increasing output and introducing higher-margin products.

The project, located on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, received a formal go-ahead from the parent firms in 2012; PetroRabigh has said previously it is due to come online in 2016, despite a string of maintenance problems at the existing facility.

Ownership of the planned new facility will be transferred from Aramco and Sumitomo to PetroRabigh in the fourth quarter of this year, the company said on Sunday.

However, it added that both Aramco and Sumitomo would continue to guarantee finance needed to build the project. The two firms will each put in around 100 billion yen ($975 million), with the rest coming from project financing, Sumitomo President Masakazu Tokura said last November.

Rabigh II will produce ethylene propylene rubber, thermoplastic polyolefin, methyl methacrylate monomer and polymethyl methacrylate among other products.

PetroRabigh’s existing plant can produce an annual 18 million tonnes of refined products and 2.4 million tonnes of petrochemical products.