Jubail, Saudi Arabia – The Saudi Gazette reports, “Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) and the U.S.’s ExxonMobil Chemical have set out their plans to add maximum value to the SR12.75 billion elastomers project at Jubail industrial city that is currently under construction.
Simon Holmes, Saudi elastomers industry development at ExxonMobil, said that this is a new area of products and it brings a lot of opportunity for conversions industry. “When you bring this production into the Kingdom, you can find uses for it in automotive and construction industries,” he said recently at the MEED Saudi Arabia Energy EPC Projects 2013 conference at Al-Khobar in the Eastern Province. When completed, the facility will produce about 400,000 tons a year (t/y) of carbon black, rubber and thermoplastic specialty polymers.
“The plant will use ExxonMobil technology and the products will be sold on local and international markets.” “The technical packages under construction are carbon black, methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE), ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM), polybutadiene rubber (PBR) and a halobutyl rubber plant (HRP). Holmes said, “It is not just a question of serving Saudi Arabia. It is also a question of feeding the GCC and even some countries in Africa. You can’t build a small plant that will only ‘serve the village’ in todays’ markets, you need a large facility.” The project will be constructed at the Al-Jubail Petrochemical Company (Kemya) complex in Jubail, which is a 50:50 joint venture of Sabic and ExxonMobil. The rubber industry is regarded as a manpower-intensive sector and a typical established tire factory will employ as many as 1,500 people on one site.”
Source: Rubber World
