Tasnee closing in on $2bn financing

07 April 2011

Saudi firms expects deal to be done within the next two months

Saudi Arabia’s National Petrochemical Industrialisation Company (Tasnee) is close to securing the financing for its $2bn acrylic acid plant at Jubail in the kingdom.

Tasnee’s chief executive, Moayyed Qurtas says that progress is being made and he expects the UK’s HSBC, the company’s financial adviser on the project, to close the deal within the next two months.

“We have had a lot of interest for this deal from banks both inside and outside of the kingdom,” Qurtas says. “The project is proceeding and we expect agreements to be signed sooner rather than later.”

The project, known as the Saudi Acrylic Monomer Company (Samco), has awarded Germany’s Linde and South Korea’s Samsung Engineering the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract and work is ongoing (MEED 17:10:11)

The consortium will build a new 160,000 tonne-a-year (t/y) acrylic acid production unit and a 160,000 t/y butyl acrylate plant.

Qurtas also says that Tasnee would be interested in further projects if an extra allocation of gas can be secured from Saudi Arabia’s oil ministry.

“We have plenty of ideas for projects but it all depends on securing extra gas,” Qurtas says. “If we do secure extra gas then we would look to implement them accordingly.”

A number of projects are also being planned by Tasnee including a $1bn 200,000-ty copper, lead and zinc smelter.

Several more petrochemcials projects in Saudi Arabia are expected to be seek financing over the next 12 months, including phase two of the PetroRabigh scheme, which has also appointed HSBC as financial adviser for a debt raising exercise.

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