Amiral Petrochemical Complex

Amiral is a planned petrochemical complex in Jubail on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia. The project will be situated next to the SATORP refinery, owned by a joint venture of Saudi Aramco (62.5%) and Total (37.5%).

Saudi Aramco and TotalEnergies signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to build the petrochemical complex in April 2018 with the plan to commence Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) in the third quarter of 2018.

The partners took the final investment decision (FID) for the construction of the facility in December 2022. The development of the petrochemical complex is aimed to support Saudi Aramco’s liquids to chemicals strategy.

The project will entail an investment of around $11bn, of which $4bn will be funded through equity by the partners.

Amiral complex will be owned, operated and integrated with the SATORP refinery. The petrochemical facility will be used to convert internally produced naphtha and refinery off-gases as well as Aramco-supplied ethane and natural gasoline into higher value chemicals.

The construction of the plant is expected to commence in the first quarter of 2023, with commercial operations aimed to begin in 2027.

The project, along with adjacent facilities, will create around 7,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Amiral Petrochemical Complex Project details

The Amiral Petrochemical Complex will comprise a mixed feed cracker, two polyethylene units leveraging Advanced Dual Loop Technology, a butadiene extraction unit, and other associated derivatives units.

The mixed feed cracker will be the first in the Gulf region to be integrated with a refinery. The facility will have production capacity of 1.65 million tonnes of ethylene per annum.

It will use naphtha and refinery off-gases from SATORP refinery, and ethane and natural gasoline as feedstock.

Amiral complex will eventually provide feedstock to other specialty chemical and petrochemical plants that will be located in the Jubail Industrial Area.

The development of the petrochemical and chemical plants, which will be owned and operated by downstream investors, is expected to involve an investment of around $4bn.

This step will help in establishing important manufacturing industries such as drilling fluids, lubes, food additives, detergents, carbon fibres, tyres, and automotive accessories.

Overall, the complex will produce more than 2.7 million metric tonnes of high value chemicals.

Key Companies Involved

In June 2019, chemical company INEOS signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Saudi Armaco and TotalEnergies to invest $2bn for the development of three plants as part of the Jubail 2 complex.

This includes building a 425,000-tonne acrylonitrile plant, a 400,000-tonne Linear Alpha Olefin (LAO) plant and associated Polyalpha Olefin.

The three plants will form part of the planned Project Amiral that will supply downstream derivatives and speciality chemicals.

In October 2019, McDermott International secured a contract, valued between $50m and $250m, to provide licencing, basic engineering package, training, technical services as well as supply of key equipment for mixed feed cracker of the Amiral Complex.

Under the terms of the contract, McDermott’s Lummus Technology will offer licencing and engineering services for olefins technology, pygas hydrotreating and CDMtbe Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MTBE) (production technology using catalytic distillation).

This will also include CDIB (back cracking of MTBE to produce high purity isobutylene and methanol) and the BASF NMP (N-methylpyrrolidone-based butadiene extraction process) as well as the delivery of proprietary Short Residence Time (SRT) heaters.

TotalEnergies in Saudi Arabia

French multinational energy and petroleum company TotalEnergies has been present in Saudi Arabia since 1974, primarily operating in the refining and petrochemical industries.

In Saudi Arabia, TotalEnergies is a shareholder in the SATORP joint venture, operates a lubricant blending plant and is working on a project that will produce aviation biofuel from hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA).

The company is also part of a joint venture that develops distributed solar power projects.

SATORP started operations in 2014. The refinery’s capacity was increased from 400,000 barrels per day to 440,000 barrels per day in 2018.

The refinery processed the first batch of plastic waste in November 2022.