Saudi's NatPet to restart Yanbu PP, PDH in early Mar

26 February 2009 04:06  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Saudi Arabia's National Petrochemical Industrial Co (NatPet) plans to restart its polypropylene (PP) and propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plants in Yanbu in the first week of March after a two-month unscheduled shutdown, a senior company executive said on Thursday.

"The problem was actually in the PDH unit which experienced some teething problems as can usually be expected soon after a plant goes on stream," said the executive.

The problems had been resolved and the unit would soon be able to provide propylene feedstock to the PP plant, he said.

Both plants started up last December, but were shut down after 20 days due to hiccups in the PDH unit.

“We managed to produce and sell a few cargoes of PP before the PDH unit shut down,” the executive said.

The company will produce copolymers in addition to homopolymers, using Basell's Spheripol technology.

The primary investors in the NatPet complex are Saudi Arabia's Alujain Corp and Xenel Group.

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By: Prema Viswanathan
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