The investment by Saudi Aramco (Dhahran; www.saudiaramco.com) in South Korea has entered its second phase: subsidiary S-Oil began building a cracker and some downstream plants at the Onsan site in Ulsan, which is part of a USD 7 bn (EUR 6.6 bn) project called Shaheen – Arabic for peregrine falcon – scheduled for completion in 2026.

The latest timetable means the plant will be completed much later than planned and at a cost a good one-and-a-half times more than first announced. However, ethylene capacity is also to be slightly higher. The investment is part of Aramco’s efforts to create buyers around the world for its own oil production.

The Shaheen cracker plans call for a mixed feed plant with ethylene capacity of 1.8 mn t/y. In total, the complex is to have production capacity of 3.2 mn t/y for ethylene, propylene, benzene, and butadiene. Details on output for the other preliminary products have not yet been announced. In addition, downstream polymer lines for 800,000 t/y of LLDPE, and 440,000 t/y of HDPE are planned, with the destiny still unclear for the leftover ethylene output of around 580,000 t/y.

S-Oil has been tasked with supplying the cracker complex with naphtha and gases from the Ulsan refinery. The residue-upgrading and olefin-downstream complexes (RUC/ODC) also includes a fluid catalytic cracking plant with propylene capacity of 700,000 t/y and downstream lines for 405,000 t/y of polypropylene and 300,000 t/y of propylene oxide.