Market and product

DOHA: Qatar is all set to expand its downstream petrochemical industry utilising the best raw material, the Deputy Premier and Minister of Energy and Industry, H E Abdullah bin Hamad Al Attiyah told reporters yesterday.

“In this business you always try to be innovative and bring new ideas. Mix feed of propane. All these assumptions are in our agenda,” he said at a news conference after the formal inauguration of the Ras Laffan Olefins Company (RLOC) ethane cracking plant.

He said that by 2014 Qatar’s total production of petrochemicals is expected to reach some 28 million tonnes per annum.

Besides, Qatar is poised to become one of the world’s main producers of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) when production touches the 14 million tonnes a year mark by 2010/2011, he said. Petrochemical units can use LPG as feedstock as well. “We are going to use all our best feedstock for our downstream industry,” said Al Attiyah.

Qatofin General Manager Dr Mohammed Yousef Al Mulla said about the RLOC plant feed at the joint news conference: “For the time being we are using 100 percent ethane to produce ethylene in RLOC. There is a study going on, maybe in the future we will use propane with mix feed of ethane, but we don’t know how much it will produce. We may reach 1.6m, but for the time being we will produce 1.3m, there is a study to increase to 1.6m utilising propane in the future.”

The QR5bn RLOC plant (including the pipeline) will produce 1.3 million metric tonne per annum (MTPA) of ethylene that will be shipped from Ras Laffan to Mesaieed via a purpose-built 133-km pipeline.

Francois Cornelis, President of Total Petrochemicals said, “This is our first large investment in the Middle East and it is in the largest ethane cracking facility. It represents on average about 10 percent of our worldwide ethylene production and around 20 percent of our worldwide polyethylene production. It is the consecration of a long-term relationship with Qatar which has always been successful.”

Cornelis added that the strategy of Total is to be among global petrochemical players and to be active in Asia. “It is also part of the strategy of Total to develop other feedstock than naphtha and as part of that strategy we want to be involved in ethane cracking,” he said.

In his part, Greg C Garland, President and CEO of Chevron Phillips Chemical told the news conference, “This is our world class investment with world class partners and our relationship with QP goes back a long time and certainly this relationship withstood the test of time which is built on the success of QChem 1 for us.”

Chevron Phillips Chemical is involved in three major projects in Qatar, including the Q-Chem project, the Q-Chem II project and the Ras Laffan Olefins Company (RLOC) project.

(Source: www.thepeninsulaqatar.com, by Nasser al Harthy )