Sadara Chemical Company still has several technical packages left to award as part of its $20bn petrochemical complex at Jubail in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

The project company is a 50:50 joint venture of Saudi Aramco and the US’ Dow Chemical and due to the size of the scheme, has been tendering engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the past 12 months.

“There are still several technical contracts to be awarded at Sadara and many contractors are hoping that the joint venture partners will make some announcements during May and June regarding winners,” says a source. “If the evaluation process takes any longer, then its awards might not be made until after Ramadan, which is late August or even early September.”

The packages still under evaluation are:

• Aromatics
• Chlorine and brine (Construction only)
• Ethylene oxide derivatives (EOD)
• Ethylene oxide (EO)
• High Density Polyethylene (HDPE)
• Polyethylene (PE)
• Polyethylene oxide diacrylate (POD)

South Korea’s Daelim Industrial and Daewoo Engineering & Construction have secured contracts at Sadara on a lump-sum turnkey (LSTK) basis and US’ Fluor is executing the utilities and offsites and polyethylene packages on an engineering, procurement, construction and management (EPCM) basis.

The US’ Jacobs Engineering is carrying out the EPCM on the chlorine and brine package, as well as the procurement and construction on the polyethylene package.  

MEED reported in late April that the tender for the port tank farm package was due to be released.

Sadara Chemical Company will have a capacity of about 8 million tonnes a year (t/y) and will be constructed at Jubail Industrial City 2 in the Eastern Province of the kingdom.

The complex will produce several speciality chemicals aimed at pushing Saudi Arabia’s petrochemicals industry further downstream.