Aramco-Total JV lets contract for Amiral petchem complex

A joint venture of Saudi Aramco and Total SA subsidiary Total Raffinage Chimie has let a contract to McDermott International Inc. to provide technology licensing and engineering services for work on what will become one of the world’s largest mixed-feed crackers at the partners’ Amiral petrochemical complex in Jubail on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast.

As part of the contract, McDermott’s Lummus Technology will deliver licenses, a basic engineering package, extended basic engineering, training, technical services, and supply of proprietary equipment for the project, McDermott said.

Specifically, Lummus Technology will provide licensing and engineering services for its proprietary olefins technology, low-pressure recovery (refinery off-gas recovery and treating), pygas hydrotreating, CDMtbe methyl tertiary butyl ether production technology using catalytic distillation, CDIB (back cracking of MTBE to produce high-purity isobutylene and methanol), and BASF NMP (N-methylpyrrolidone-based butadiene extraction process) technologies.

Additionally, Lummus will deliver its proprietary Short Residence Time (SRT) heaters for the project.

McDermott said it will book the contract award—valued at $50-250 million—in its third-quarter backlog.

This latest contract follows the JV’s signing of a memorandum of understanding with Daelim under which the South Korean petrochemical company plans to build an 80,000-tonne/year polyisobutylene plant due for start-up in 2024 at the Amiral complex, Aramco said.

Slated to begin in February, launch of front-end engineering and design of the PIB plant—which will be equipped with Daelim’s proprietary PIB technology and will use feedstock from the Amiral complex—was to be concluded sometime in this year’s fourth quarter.

First announced in April 2018, the Amiral complex will be built next to the jointly held Saudi Aramco Total Refinery & Petrochemicals Co.’s 440,000-b/d full conversion refinery in Jubail (OGJ Online, Apr. 16, 2018).

The new complex will include a mixed-feed steam cracker—50% ethane and refinery off gas—with a capacity to produce 1.5 million tpy of ethylene and related petrochemical units designed to yield an overall production of more than 2.7 million tpy of high-quality chemical products, Aramco and Total said.

FEED activities for the proposed Amiral complex—which is due for commissioning in 2024—are now under way.

Alongside an Aramco-Total investment of about $5 billion, the project’s cracker will feed other petrochemical and specialty chemical plants that represent an additional $4 billion investment by third party investors for an overall project value of about $9 billion.

In addition to strengthening the long-standing relationship between the companies, the project complements Aramco’s strategy to expand its capacity in the chemicals business by 2030 in line with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.