Malaysian state-owned oil company Petronas and its partner Saudi Aramco are studying projects to build more petrochemical plants to make full use of raw materials from their joint venture in Malaysia.
Aramco signed a deal in late February to take a $7 billion investment, in the RAPID (Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development) joint venure with Petronas in Pengerang, southern Malaysia.
Projects being studied include speciality chemicals and synthetic rubber, company officials said at an industry conference. "We're looking at what else we can do at RAPID," said Md Arif Mahmood, executive vice president and CEO of downstream operations at Petronas.
"There will be specialty (chemicals) using the C4s (technology)," he added, referring to petrochemicals produced from naphtha crackers.
The cracker could produce about 600,000 tonnes of butadiene, Abdulaziz Al Judaimi, senior vice president of downstream at Saudi Aramco, told reporters. The butadiene could be used to produce either elastomers, or synthetic rubber, he said.
