The Gulf Coast Growth Ventures near Texas - a joint venture between ExxonMobil and SABIC - has reached mechanical completion of a monoethylene glycol unit and two polyethylene units, ExxonMobil said in a statement on Tuesday.
The project startup is expected to begin ahead of schedule, likely in the fourth quarter of 2021, it added.
In September 2019, SABIC and ExxonMobil announced the start of construction work at their joint petrochemical complex, and expected that it would be operational by 2022.
SABIC, the global petrochemical industry giant, signed with ExxonMobil in May 2018, an agreement to establish a joint venture for petrochemical industries in the American Gulf Coast, based on a feasibility study that estimated the total cost of the complex at approximately USD 7.3 billion (27.4 billion riyals).
The project includes the establishment of an ethylene production unit with an expected annual production capacity of 1.8 million tons, which will be supplied to feed two units for the production of polyethylene and another for the production of monoethylene glycol.
These developments come in parallel with a gradual global recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, which reflected positively on the petrochemical industry over the current year.
Also on Tuesday, Rabigh Refining and Petrochemical Company (Petro Rabigh), which operates in oil refining and the production of petrochemicals such as polyethylene and polypropylene, announced profits of 1366 million riyals (USD 364.2 million) by the end of the first half of 2021, compared to losses of 3232 million riyals during the same period.
The company pointed to the improvement in the profit margin for petrochemical products as a result of better market conditions and the gradual recovery of the global economy from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
