MOSCOW (MRC) -- Qatar Petroleum owns 38.1% in the Arabian Refinery Company, which in turn owns 66.6% in Egyptian Refining Company (ERC), reported Gulf Times.
All of the ERC Refinery units are now successfully operating, and are expected to ramp up to full production before the end of the first quarter of 2020, which will reduce Egypt’s dependence on imported petroleum products.
The project will also create job opportunities for the local workforce and will provide a boost to the support services sector in this important region of Egypt.
The successful startup of the ERC refinery will further strengthen Qatar Petroleum’s international downstream footprint through this vital project, which is its largest investment in an Arab country as well as in Africa. The refinery project will support Egypt’s plans to increase the resilience of its domestic hydrocarbon supply chain and reduce dependence on imports.
Qatar Petroleum has participated in this project since 2012, which has cost USD4.4bn with the aim to process around 4.7mn tonnes per year of mainly atmospheric residue feed from the adjacent Cairo Oil Refinery Company.
It will mainly produce Euro V refined products (such as diesel and jet fuel), which are intended for consumption primarily in Cairo and surrounding areas.
As it was informed earlier, China’s top petrochemical maker Wanhua Chemical Group aims to increase LPG imports to about 5.5 million mt in 2020 from 4 million mt this year as it procures feedstock from diversified sources ahead of new projects in Yantai and widens trading activities in Asia.
A 1 million mt/year ethylene integration project - phase two of its petrochemical project in northeast Shandong province - will be the first ethylene cracker to use LPG as feedstock globally and is set for commercial production in the second half of 2020. Together with associated downstream units and a nearby feedstock storage rock cavern with a capacity of 1.2 million cubic meters, the project is costing around Yuan 20 billion.
In view of the said above, Qatar Petroleum signed a 10-year Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) supply agreement with China’s Wanhua Chemicals in mid-November 2019. The agreement is for the sale of approximately 800,000 metric tons per year of LPG over a period of 10 years.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
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