Award for design of Oman petchem complex soon

Total investment in Phase 2 of the Duqm refining and petrochemical complex is estimated at a ballpark $8 -9 billion, underscoring the ambitious scale of the initiative.

Commenting on the provisional timeline for the implementation of this phase, Al Kharusi explained: “The design phase will take about, say 18 months, before we move into the financing stage, which will take another 12-18 months, assuming all goes well. So we are looking at another 3- 4 years before construction can commence. By then, the refinery would be complete and commissioned. So we foresee a 2-3 year gap between the start-up of the refinery and the commissioning of the petchem complex.”

Oman Oil Company and Kuwait Petroleum International are presently the only shareholders in the entity that will implement the petchem complex, although third-party investment will be welcome as well, he noted.

Output from the 230,000 bpd capacity refinery will include Diesel, Jet fuel, Naphtha, LPG, Sulphur and Pet coke as its primary products. While the refined products will be marketed internationally by the marketing arms of Oman Oil Co and KPI, naphtha and other products from the steam cracker are proposed to be processed into a wide range of commercially valuable petrochemicals and intermediate products for further value addition.

Around 10 different types of petrochemicals and intermediate products will be churned out by the petrochemicals cluster when it is fully operational by around 2014/2025. The list includes Ethylene Glycols, High Density PE (HDPE), Oxo chemicals, Polypropylene, Butadiene, MTBE and Aromatics.