PETRONAS’ Malaysia RAPID complex to produce 1.2m tonnes/yr of C2

SINGAPORE (ICISI)–Malaysia’s PETRONAS will be able to produce 1.2m tonnes/year of ethylene (C2) at its planned steam cracker complex (SCC) within the Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project in Pengerang, Johor, company sources said on Wednesday.

The ethylene cracker and the 300,000 bbl/day refinery at the site are expected to start full operations in 2019, with other downstream plants seen starting up in phases thereafter, the sources said at the sidelines of the 2015 Asian Downstream Week in Singapore.

Construction work at the SCC started in June this year.

The engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) contract for the project was awarded to a consortium of Japanese firms – Toyo Engineering Corp and Toyo Engineering & Construction – in July last year.

“They [PETRONAS] have already started building the refinery and co-gen[eration] plant,” a company source said.

PETRONAS has yet to officially announce capacity configurations of the steam cracker complex, which will also house a butadiene extraction plant, a benzene unit and an methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) unit.

The company previously said that the petrochemical complex will have an overall capacity of 7.7m tonnes/year, including differentiated and specialty chemicals.