Borouge to expand Abu Dhabi olefins complex

July 2, 2009
Borouge, a joint venture of Borealis AS of Vienna and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., plans to make its already expanding ethane-cracking complex in Ruwais, Abu Dhabi, the world’s largest.

By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, July 2
-- Borouge, a joint venture of Borealis AS of Vienna and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., plans to make its already expanding ethane-cracking complex in Ruwais, Abu Dhabi, the world’s largest.

It has let a $1.075 billion contract to Linde Group, Munich, for a third ethane cracker at Ruwais with capacity of 1.5 million tonnes/year (tpy).

The project will increase total polyolefins capacity of the complex to 4.5 million tpy by the end of 2013. In addition to the ethane cracker, it includes construction of second-generation polypropylene and polyethylene units based on Borealis’s Borstar technology, a low-density polyethylene unit, and a butene unit, plus offsite utilities and marine facilities.

The new ethane cracker will add to an existing 600,000 tpy ethane cracker and a 1.5 million tpy unit under construction.

The world’s largest olefins complex in terms of ethylene capacity now is Nova Chemicals Corp.’s 2.8 million tpy facility at Joffre, Alta.

The cracker under construction at Ruwais is part of a project to increase Borouge polyolefins capacity to 2 million tpy by mid-2010. Net ethylene output from that plant will be 600,000 tpy, according to Chemical Market Associates Inc., Houston, because some of the product will be dimerized to butene, and butene and more ethylene will be metathesized to propylene (OGJ, Aug. 25, 2008, p. 48).

In that project, Borouge is adding a 752,000-tpy olefins conversion unit, a 540,000-tpy polyethylene plant, and two 400,000-tpy polypropylene plants.