Qapco's investments in Qatar crosses US$3 bln

15-Dec-09

Global petrochemicals major Qatar Petrochemical Company (Qapco) has invested in excess of US$3 bln in a series of ventures in the petrochemicals industry. With this, Qatar is like to be within the target of achieving a total annual petrochemical production of 28 mln tons by 2012. Started up a few days ago, Qatofin, a joint venture between Qapco (63%), Total Petrochemicals (36%) and QP (1%), will have a capacity of 450,000 tpa of linear low-density polyethylene. The ethane cracker, set up by Ras Laffan Olefins Company (RLOC), to be operational next month, will have a capacity of 1.3 mln tpa of ethylene. This is a joint venture among Qatofin (45.7%), Q-Chem II (53.3%) and QP (1%). In line with this investment Qapco has launched another US$549.2 mln expansion project in Mesaieed Industrial City to set up its third polyethylene production line. Locally available ethylene will be used as feedstock. This expansion will annually add 300,000 metric tons to Qapco's output of low density polyethylene (LDPE), augmenting overall annual LLDPE production to 700,000 tons by end of 2011.