Oman’s OQBI Maxes Gas-Fed Plants For Record 1.9mn Ton 2024 Output

14 Mar 2025 Issue: 68 / 11 By: James Marriott

OQ Base Industries (OQBI) pushed its gas-fed plants above nameplate capacity in 2024 to produce a record 1.9mn tons of methanol, ammonia, and LPG. The performance demonstrates it has scope to move ahead with planned expansions.

OQ Base Industries (OQBI), a subsidiary of Oman state energy firm OQ, maxed output in 2024 from its integrated gas-fed facilities located in the southern port city of Salalah. According to its freshly-released results OQBI averaged 112% utilization across its 1.095mn t/y methanol facility, 365,000 t/y ammonia plant and gas processing facilities with their 356,000 t/y of LPG/liquids extraction capacity.

This has translated into record 1.9mn tons annual production across all three facilities (see chart 1). Nearly everything OQBI produces is exported except for a small amount of LPG that stays in the domestic market (see graphic). For 2024 such domestic sales of ‘cooking gas’ amounted to 38,000 tons. The rest is transferred to the trading subsidiary OQ Trading (OQT) under offtake agreements for each of the three product groups and exported overseas. (CONTINUED - 639 WORDS)