Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura refinery and petrochemicals complex will produce 8 million tonnes a year (t/y) of petroleum and petrochemicals products, according to the vice-president of the joint venture running the facility.

The refinery will be the largest plastics and chemicals production complex in the world, said Adil al-Tubayyeb at a meeting in Saudi Arabia on 31 August.

US petrochemicals major Dow Chemical and energy giant Saudi Aramco are jointly developing the refinery.

The complex will have up of 35 process plants, “each of which could be a major project”, according to Al-Tubayyeb.

In March, sources close to the project raised doubts over Dow’s ability to finance its part of the scheme (MEED 1:3:09).

In June, MEED reported that the joint venture has delayed a front-end engineering and design (Feed) study due for completion in 2009 by a year (MEED 5:6:09).

The partners now hope to complete the complex by 2015.