SOCAR Polymer LLC, a subsidiary of state-owned State Oil Co. of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR), has let an engineering, construction, and procurement (EPC) contract to Maire Tecnimont SPA, Milan, to build the country’s first polypropylene (PP) plant, in the Sumgait Chemical Industrial Park (SCIP), about 30 km north of Baku.
Under the contract, which was awarded on a lump-sum basis, Maire Tecnimont subsidiaries Tecnimont SPA and Kinetics Technology SPA, will provide complete engineering services, equipment and material supply, and construction activities for the plant, including all associated utilities and offsite installations, Maire Tecnimont said.
The project’s scope also will include start-up and commissioning activities for the plant, the service provider said.
Maire Tecnimont valued the EPC contract at about €350 million.
The PP plant is have a production capacity of about 180,000 tonnes/year and will receive feedstock from an unidentified existing naphtha cracker, Maire Tecnimont said.
In late 2014, SOCAR Polymer secured both a $420 million loan and $2 billion line of credit from Russia’s Gazprombank for the proposed petrochemicals project at SCIP, which at the time, was to produce 200,000 tpy of PP and 120,000 tpy of high-density polyethylene, SOCAR said in a Dec. 13, 2014, release.
The PP plant, which SOCAR purchased from Varennes, Que., and had dismantled, reconditioned, and transported to Azerbaijan, will use LyondellBasell’s Spheripol process technology, according to project descriptions from Maire Tecnimont and SCIP.
The PP plant is scheduled to be commissioned by late 2016, SCIP said.
