By Pratap John
DOHA: Qatar has “put on hold” the multi-billion dollar joint venture petrochemical complex at Mesaieed because of “international market turbulence”, a senior official has said.
“We are keeping the project on hold. But we have no plans to abandon it altogether,” said Mohamed Turki al-Sobai, vice-chairman of Qatar Holding, a QP affiliate, which is developing the world scale petrochemical complex jointly with South Korea’s Honam Petrochemical Corporation.
Al-Sobai said the project was originally slated for a 2012 start up.
“We will definitely miss that target. Nevertheless, we will try to initiate some steps next year towards setting up the project, if there is a positive signal from the market,” he told Gulf Times here yesterday.
The grassroots project, a 70:30 joint venture between Qatar Holding and Honam Petrochemical Corporation, is meant to produce some 1.7mn tonnes per year of propylene, polypropylene, styrene, polystyrene and aromatics (xylene).
The plant will have used ethane and naphtha, provided by Qatar Petroleum, to produce 700,000metric tonnes (MT) of polypropylene, 600,000MT of styrene monomer and 220,000MT of polystyrene in addition to significant quantities of propylene and aromatics.
Besides targeting the regional and international markets, the joint venture has been envisaged as a supplier of products to downstream industries in Qatar as well.
During the heads of agreement signing in 2007, QP had said Foster Wheeler of the UK would provide the front-end engineering and design while process technologies for the plant would come from ABB Lummus (US) and Basell Technologies (Italy).
The joint venture would have been the first petrochemical complex in Qatar to use the “available liquid feedstock” from projects now operating in Mesaieed and Ras Laffan.