Adnoc to Move Ahead with Borouge 4

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) has announced plans to build a new petrochemicals complex in Ruwais as part of its Borouge joint venture with Vienna-based Borealis.

The companies will undertake a pre-front end engineering and design (feed) of Borouge 4, which includes a world-scale, mixed-feed cracker based on output from the Ruwais refinery, and polyolefin and non-polyolefin production units.

Total capacity will be around six million tonnes a year (t/y), with output comprising polyolefins (polyethylene and polypropylene) and non-polyolefin products (e.g. benzene, butadiene).

A spokesperson for Borealis tells MEED the pre-feed will take 9-10 months to complete.

“We hope to move to the feed by the end of 2018,” he says.

The project is planned to come onstream by 2023, the firms said in a statement.

The Borouge joint venture was established in 1998 and production has progressively ramped up with the completions of the Borouge 1, 2 and 3 complexes. Current production capacity is 4.5 million t/y, following the successful start-up of Borouge 3 in 2016. The completion of Borouge 4 will take total capacity of the site to almost 11 million t/y of petrochemical products.

Adnoc has also announced the development of a new 500,000 t/y polypropylene plant, which will be part of the Borouge 3 complex. The engineering, procurement and construction contract will be tendered this year.

“The Borouge 4 complex and polypropylene plant will allow us to grow our current petrochemical production to almost 10 million t/y, enabling us to take advantage of the market opportunities we have identified, particularly in Asia, where the high-grade polymer market is set to double by 2040,” Adnoc group chief executive Sultan al-Jaber said in a statement.

The agreement signed between Adnoc and Borealis said that their current joint venture, which began in 1998, will be reviewed for a possible extension beyond its first 30-year lifetime.

Adnoc is aiming to expand its petrochemicals production to 11.4 million t/y from the current 4.5 million t/y by 2025. With additional capacity added through development of the fourth complex and the additional propylene plant, Adnoc would be in line to meet its petrochemicals target. It also wants to ramp up crude production capacity to 3.5 million barrels a day by 2018.

The Abu Dhabi oil major announced recently that it would open up some of its assets to partnerships with international companies and would look to publicly list minority stakes in some businesses.