SAUDI ARAMCO, TOTAL AND DAELIM SIGN MOU TO BUILD NEW POLYISOBUTYLENE PLANT

Saudi Aramco (Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; www.saudiaramco.com) with its partner Total S.A. (Paris, France; www.total.com) announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Daelim (Seoul, South Korea; www.daelim.co.kr/). Under the MoU, Daelim is planning to build a new 80,000-ton state-of-the-art polyisobutylene (PIB) plant, which is expected to come onstream in 2024. This agreement is another step to drive Saudi Aramco’s petrochemicals growth strategy. This follows Saudi Aramco’s announcement in October 2018 to launch an engineering study to build a large petrochemical complex in Jubail. The launch of the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) of the PIB plant will start in February 2019 and will be concluded in Q4 2019. The new petrochemicals facility will be using feedstock from the Amiral complex in Jubail, located on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast. It is the first time that the PIB product will be developed in the Kingdom.