South Korea’s S-Oil advances works on Shaheen olefins complex in Ulsan

Saudi Aramco’s majority owned S-Oil Corp. is progressing with construction of its Shaheen petrochemical project at the operator’s 669,000-b/d integrated refining site at Onsan National Industrial Complex in Ulsan, South Korea (OGJ Online, Dec. 16, 2022).

Lead project contractor Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd. (Hyundai E&C) has completed installation at the project site of a 2,370-tonne propylene separation tower—now South Korea’s largest—measuring 118 m tall and 8.5 m wide, the service provider said on Mar. 27.

The tower—which will be used for the complex’s planned production of 770,000 tonnes/year (tpy) of propylene—comes as part of the broader $7-billion Shaheen development, which includes a grassroots steam cracker for producing 1.8 million tpy of ethylene from a mix of naphtha and LPG feedstock received from a new unit outfitted with TC2C thermal crude-to-chemicals technology, S-Oil said in a March 2023 release.

Jointly developed by Lummus Technology LLC, Saudi Aramco Technologies Co., and Chevron Lummus Global (CLG), TC2C is an integrated process combining Lummus' ethylene technology, Aramco's separation and catalyst technologies, and CLG's hydroprocessing catalysts and reactor technologies to convert the Ulsan refinery’s by-products of naphtha, offgas, and other feeds into direct feedstocks for the new cracker.

Construction began on the project in March 2023. Hyundai E&C confirmed the Shaheen project also will produce:

• Butadiene; 200,000 tpy.
• Benzene; 280,000 tpy.
• Linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE); 880,000 tpy.
• High-density polyethylene (HDPE); 440,000 tpy. 

Installation of the complex’s steam cracker is due for completion by midyear, with the project’s ethylene and base oil production plants slated to begin test runs sometime during second-half 2025, according to Hyundai E&C.

With the overall Shaheen project now more than 60% completed, Hyundai E&C and S-Oil separately in March said the entire project is scheduled for mechanical completion during first-half 2026 for a targeted start of commercial operations by second-half 2026.