South Korea's Samsung Engineering Company received on 21 June a letter of intent from Saudi European Petrochemical Company (Ibn Zahr) for the contract to build its new polypropylene (PP) plant in Jubail. The contract duration will be 27 months (MEED 28:5:06).

Samsung beat off competition from Germany's Linde to win the $302 million engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract, which will be carried out on a lump-sum turnkey basis. The PP facility will have capacity of 500,000 tonnes a year. The US' Dow Chemical Company has licensed its proprietary Unipol technology for the plant.

The majority of the propylene feedstock for the plant will be sourced from an olefins conversion unit (OCU) for which US-based ABB Lummus Global is the technology provider. A tender to build the OCU is expected to be issued soon.

The award of the PP contract also paves the way for contractor selection on the offsites and utilities (O&U) package. Four companies Taiwan's CTCI, South Korea's Daelim Industrial Company, the US' Fluor Corporation and Samsung are understood to have submitted technical and commercial offers for the contract. Oslo-based Aker Kvaerner is the project management consultant (PMC) on the scheme (MEED 28:4:06).