Oman’s OQ merger of state oil firm OOC and refiner Orpic tweeted on 4 March that the 14in pipeline built to take NGL feedstock from the Fahud oilfield gas extraction unit to the Liwa Plastics plant under construction at Sohar is “ready for start-up.” Liwa’s 880,000 t/y mixed feed cracker will process 36,000 b/d of light ends from Sohar refinery and 24,000 b/d of NGLs from Fahud field. Output will comprise 1.1mn t/y of petrochemicals, including 800,000 t/y of polyethylene and 215,000 t/y of polypropylene. The $6.5bn Liwa project was initially intended to start up in 2018, but the schedule slipped to 2020 because of delays in raising finance. Orpic awarded EPC contracts worth a combined $4.5bn for the project in 2015 (MEES, 14 October 2016).
Oman’s DRPIC joint venture of OOC and Kuwait’s overseas downstream firm KPI has also awarded front end engineering design for a 1.6mn t/y cracker and petchems petchems units to be integrated with a 230,000 b/d refinery being built at Duqm. Refinery start-up estimates range from mid2022 to 2023-24 (MEES, 7 June 2019). (CONTINUED - 176 WORDS)