Aramco approves Satorp, Motiva chemicals expansion plans

State-owned energy giant Saudi Aramco has approved two major plans to expand its chemicals production in Saudi Arabia and in the US.

Its board of directors signed off on the expansion project at its joint venture refinery and petrochemicals complex with French petrochemicals firm Total, as well as funding for its front-end engineering and design.

After years of talks between the partners, Aramco and Total announced plans in April to build a new petrochemicals facility next to the 400,000 b/d Satorp complex at Jubail.

The new US$5 billion complex, which will be integrated with the Satorp refinery, started operations in 2015. It will include a mixed-feed cracker, processing 50% ethane and refinery off-gas, to produce as much as 1.5 million tonnes/year of ethylene. No details have been given on the planned start-up date yet.

The board also approved a funding request for chemicals capacity expansion at Aramco’s US subsidiary Motiva Enterprises, the company said.

Motiva signed two agreements in April with Honeywell UOP and TechnipFMC, to evaluate proprietary technology for a mixed-feed cracker, as well as benzene and paraxylene production. These will be part of a potential new complex at the 603,000 b/d Port Arthur refinery in Texas.

Aramco plans to raise its global refining capacity to between 8 million b/d and 10 million b/d, from 5.4 million b/d currently.

Saudi oil minister Khalid al-Falih, who also sits on Aramco’s board, said last May the company planned to invest US$20 billion over the next five years in its US refining brand, to take advantage of the US’ feedstock crude and gas for petrochemical production.