Petronas/Aramco to expand product base at Rapid: elastomers/SR on the cards

Malaysia’s state-owned oil company Petronas and its partner in the Rapid (Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development) project in Johor, Saudi Aramco, are studying the feasibility of building other petrochemical plants to make full use of raw materials from the Rapid project, according to report by Reuters.

Aramco signed a deal with Petronas early this year taking up a US$7 billion investment in the Rapid project in Pengerang, located in the southern Malaysian state of Johor. http://plasticsandrubberasia.com/mar2017/company1.html

Projects being studied include speciality chemicals and synthetic rubber, said the report.

Last year, Petronas had cancelled the proposed US$1.3 billion elastomers project at Rapid, in a filing to the Malaysian Stock Exchange. At that time it said the cancellation of the project followed a review which was conducted on various key aspects of the elastomers project, including the market outlook and projected return on investment. http://plasticsandrubberasia.com/apr2016/company13.html

Speaking at a conference recently, Md Arif Mahmood, Executive Vice-President/CEO of downstream operations at Petronas, was quoted as having said that the companies would look at producing other products and to expand the partnership at Rapid, since there will already be speciality chemicals using the C4 technology from naphtha crackers.

The cracker has a capacity of 600,000 tonnes of butadiene, which could be used to produce either elastomers or synthetic rubber.