Construction wraps on ethylene plant at Malaysia’s RAPID project

Construction activities are now completed on Pengerang Refining and Petrochemical (PRefChem) subsidiary Pengerang Refining Co. Sdn. Bhd.’s (PRefChem Refining) steam cracker complex at the Saudi Aramco-Petronas jointly held $27-28 billion Pengerang Integrated Complex (PIC) in southeastern Johor, Malaysia, 400 km south of Kuala Lumpur (OGJ Online, Mar. 29, 2018).

Toyo Engineering Corp. and its subsidiaries have completed engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning (EPCC) services on the 1.291 million-tonnes/year ethylene plant, which was delivered to PRefChem Refining in December 2019, the service provider said on Feb. 13.

The complex also will produce 630,000 tpy of propylene, 185,000 tpy of butadiene, 660,000 tpy of pygas, 175,000 tpy of benzene, and 550,000 tpy of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), according to Toyo.

Completion of the project follows Petronas’s earlier contract award to Toyo to provide EPCC on the cracker complex (OGJ Online, Aug. 11, 2014).

The steam cracker complex forms part of PRefChem’s 300,000-b/d refinery and petrochemical integrated development (RAPID) project at PIC that, once fully operational, will produce a range of refined products, including gasoline and diesel, meeting Euro 5-quality fuel specifications to help the Asia Pacific’s growing need for petroleum and petrochemical products, as well as naphtha-LPG feedstock for its combined 3.6 million-tpy integrated cracker and downstream petrochemical complex (OGJ Online, Sept. 26, 2018).

While the RAPID project was scheduled to reach startup by yearend 2019, the owners have yet to confirm the current status of operable units at the site (OGJ Online, Apr. 12, 2019; Jan. 4, 2019).

In its most recent earnings report to investors for third-quarter 2019, Petronas said that, as of Sept. 30, 2019, PIC was 99.8% completed.