Qatar Petroleum (QP, Doha / Qatar; www.qp.com.qa) and Shell (The Hague / The Netherlands; www.shell.com) on 14 January announced that they would not proceed with their planned 80:20 Al Karaana petrochemicals project. Under an agreement that dates back to 2011, the two companies originally had wanted to set up a gas-based cracker and downstream units for 1.5m t/y of MEG, 300,000 t/y of linear alpha olefins as well as 250,000 t/y of oxo-alcohol in Ras Laffan / Qatar – see Plasteurope.com of 08.03.2013. Start-up was scheduled for 2018.

The reason for scrapping the project, the companies said, was high capital costs, which render it “commercially infeasible, particularly in the current economic climate prevailing in the energy industry.”