In an effort to diversify their economies, national oil companies from the Middle East and North Africa are investing in chemicals, where they see attractive growth and sustainable prospects. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) plans to invest $45 billion, with partners, in its refining and petrochemical complex in Ruwais, United Arab Emirates. Qatar Petroleum and Algeria’s Sonatrach are also spearheading multi-billion-dollar investments. The plans come on the heels of an initiative announced last month by Saudi Aramco to spend $60 billion on petrochemical and refining projects in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and India. ADNOC says it wants to make Ruwais “the world’s largest and most advanced integrated refining and petrochemical complex.” It will add a refinery to the site, increasing capacity more than 65% up to 1.5 million barrels per day, by 2025. In chemicals, the company plans a mixed-feed ethylene cracker that will triple the site’s petrochemical output to 14.4 million metric tons by 2025. The cracker is an amplification of plans ADNOC and European polyolefins maker Borealis unveiled last year to up capacity in Ruwais to 11.4 million metric tons by 2023. ADNOC is also establishing two industrial parks on nearly 10 km² of land meant to attract makers of specialty chemicals and other products to Ruwais. ADNOC has already signed on the Spanish firm Cepsa to build a plant for the surfactant raw material linear alkylbenzene (LAB). In Algeria, meanwhile, Total and Sonatrach are planning a $1.4 billion propane dehydrogenation (PDH) and polypropylene (PP) plant with 550,000 metric tons of annual output. A decade ago, the two firms planned a cracker project that didn’t materialize. Source: Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), 5/21/2018, p.12.

TCGR Note: The world is already responding to the clear trend that transportation fuels globally will gradually decline towards 2030 to 2040 despite shorter term gains due to stricter fuel regulations. So chemicals now to 2040 is hot! And new trends like oil-to-chemicals are even hotter. For more information, see TCGR’s multi-client study, “Oil-to-Chemicals: Technological Approaches and Advanced Process Configurations.”