S-Chem to start 775,000 tonne/year Saudi SM plant

14 December 2006 14:30  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--S-Chem will start a new 775,000 tonne/year styrene monomer (SM) plant in Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia, which will be the world’s largest single train SM unit, industry sources said on Thursday.

 

The unit is expected to be started around the end of the third quarter or the beginning of the fourth quarter in 2007, with the first material scheduled to be commercially available from 1 January 2008.

 

According to sources, the target market for the SM will be the Asia Pacific market.

 

S-Chem is the name of the Saudi Arabian joint venture between ChevronPhillips and Saudi Industrial Investment Group and is in charge of the Al Jubail Aromax unit, which produces 286,000 tonnes/year of cyclohexane (CX) and an undisclosed amount of benzene.

 

Feedstock for the styrene will be provided through the internal infra structure as S-Chem will build a Pentane feedstock cracker and a connecting olefins plant to provide the ethylene.

 

The Aromax unit will be shut down for 90 days from 1 February 2007, which sources said was in order to boost benzene production to accommodate the new styrene production. The CX output is expected to remain unchanged.

 

The production capacities for the Pentane cracker, olefins plant and the new benzene capacity of the Aromax unit were unknown.

 

Sources said that the new capacities were just sufficient for the SM production and that no surplus ethylene or benzene was expected to be sold commercially.

By: Jorn Steffensen
+44 20 8652 3214

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