Saudi Arabia's Petro Rabigh to defer start up of phase 2 units from Q4-16 to Q2-17

30-Sep-16

Saudi Arabia's Petro Rabigh will start up all the remaining units of its phase 2 project by the second quarter of 2017, the company said Thursday, as per Platts. The company had earlier planned to start the units by end-2016. "The delay in these plants is due to the construction market challenges," the company said.

To feed the upcoming units, Petro Rabigh raised the gas processing capacities of its existing cracker by 30 MMcf/d to 125 MMcf/d. The cracker can now produce 1.6 million mt/year of ethylene, up from 1.3 million mt/year, and is currently functional.Rabigh 2 will also use 3 million mt/year of naphtha produced at an integrated 400,000 b/d refinery to make aromatics, including 1.34 million mt/year of paraxylene and 424,000 mt/year of benzene besides several other downstream products. The company has already started up cumene and phenol plants that are a part of the phase 2 project.