Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) and Bahrain’s National Oil and Gas Authority (Noga) have signed a deal to build an aromatics factory in the kingdom.

The facility will have an annual capacity of 1.44 million tonnes, according to a report by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).

The plant is set to produce “secondary products”, said Mohammad al-Farhoud, CEO of PIC, which is a subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.

Details regarding the scope, cost and timeline for the project would be discussed later, he added.

This is the second such agreement between Noga and PIC, following an announcement in 2014, where the two firms signed an agreement to develop an aromatics complex.

The project budgeted at $1.5bn is still in the front-end engineering and design (feed) stage. Bapco was awarded the contract to carry out the feed on the project in September 2015. 

PIC and Noga were unavailable for comment.