Companies such as Nippon Oil, Japan Petroleum Exploration Company (Japex) and Arabian Oil Company are expected to be on the list of companies to be visited by Aramco, which is seeking partners to share the investment cost and secure technology and long-term offtake agreements. For their part, Japanese companies are keen on closer co-operation with hydrocarbons-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia to ensure crude supplies to meet rising demand at home. In addition, Japanese contractors have hopes of winning major contracts, as JGC Corporationhas done on Rabigh, where it is the front-end engineering and design (FEED) and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.

Aramco plans to finalise negotiations with potential partners within 12 months. The Ras Tanura project will be the largest of its kind in the kingdom and will involve major upgrade work at the refinery and close integration with a new petrochemicals complex and nearby gas facilities at Juaymah.

'Similar to the Rabigh project, Saudi Aramco is looking into the possibility of integrating petrochemicals production with the Ras Tanura refinery and Juaymah industrial area feedstocks,' Isam al-Bayat, Aramco's vice-president of new business development, said at the 2005 Saudi Mega Projects conference on 9 May. 'The proposed integration would include a large ethane/naphtha-based cracker, an aromatics recovery complex and complementary downstream derivative units to produce new secondary petrochemicals. The total project cost is expected to be about $6,000 million.'

The Ras Tanura refinery comprises a 325,000-barrel-a-day (b/d) hydrocracking unit and a 200,000-b/d condensate splitter. The refinery also produces 13,000 b/d of asphalt. The integration with petrochemicals aims at taking advantage of the synergies between the two elements and reducing costs, increasing efficiency and widening the products base.

As part of a wider refinery investment programme, Aramco is looking at converting its Yanbu refinery into an integrated refining and petrochemical complex, and to build a new export refinery, also at Yanbu (MEED 18:3:05).

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