Gulf Petrochemical Industries Co. (GPIC) has awarded Fluor Corp. a contract to execute front-end engineering and design (FEED) for a proposed aromatics plant to be built at GPIC’s petrochemicals complex located across 60 hectares of reclaimed land in Sitra, Bahrain.

As part of the contract, Fluor will deliver a FEED study based on commercially proven process technologies for the plant’s targeted production of 1.2 million tonnes/year (tpy) of paraxylene and 500,000 tpy of benzene, the service provider said on July 21.

Critical building blocks for plastics, polyester fibers, and packaging materials, paraxylene and benzene production from the plant would help meet global demand for high‑performance consumer and industrial products, as well as expand capabilities of GPIC’s current operations at Sitra, Fluor said.

GPIC’s existing complex currently uses a feedstock of natural gas domestically produced in Bahrain to produce about 1.2 million tonnes/day of ammonia, 1.2 million tonnes/day of methanol, and 1.7 million tonnes/day of urea.

Neither Fluor nor GPIC revealed details regarding a timeline for completion of the proposed aromatics plant.

GPIC is a joint venture of Bahrain Petroleum Co. (33.3%), SABIC Agri-Nutrients Investment Co. (33.3%), and Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Co. (PIC; 33.3%).