Aramco to invest $7 billion in refinery project in South Korea

18 Nov 2022 , 08:26 AM

On Thursday, Saudi Aramco announced intentions to invest in a $7 billion project to create petrochemicals from crude oil at the refinery complex of its South Korean partner S-Oil Corp in the port city of Ulsan.

The Saudi company’s largest investment in South Korea is the Shaheen project, which will create chemicals from crude oil for the first time commercially, according to a statement from Aramco.

According to Aramco, development on the complex, which can manufacture up to 3.2 million tonnes of petrochemicals annually (tpy), will start in 2023 and be finished by 2026. The cracker plant will have a capacity of 1.8 million tpy, whereas the chemicals-to-crude facility will have a capacity of 46,000 barrels per day.

More than 60% of S-Oil is owned by Saudi Aramco.

S-Oil’s chemical yield by volume might virtually double to 25% upon project completion, according to Aramco.

This year, China’s weaker demand caused cracker operators to reduce output, which negatively impacted the region’s petrochemical industry.

The businesses initially agreed to a memorandum of agreement for the $6 billion Ulsan project in 2019.

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