A US $7.5bn contract deal has been signed for the construction of the Tahrir Petrochemical Complex in Egypt. The contract was signed between the Red Sea National Refining and Petrochemicals Company and General Authority For Suez Canal Economic Zone, the main developer of the Suez Canal Economic Zone in the presence of Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Tarek Al Mulla, minister of petroleum and mineral resources.
Engineer Tarek Al-Mulla confirmed that the project is one of the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Wealth’s pillars to develop the refining and petrochemical industry in the North African country.
The project will be built on an area of 3.56 million square meters in Ain Sokhna industrial zone, near the Gulf of Suez. It will involve setting up of a 4 000 000 tonne per annum naphtha cracker plant which will be biggest in the world.
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Meet local market needs
A related downstream facilities with the capacity to produce 1.4 million tonnes of ethylene and polyethylene per annum, 900,000tpa of propylene, 250,000tpa of butadiene, 350,000tpa of benzene, and 100,000tpa of hexene-1 will be developed together with single-train ammonium nitrate process plant with a capacity of 1,060tpd and a nitric acid unit.
The nitrate process plant will feature support utilities and offsite facilities such as a 3,800m³ph capacity seawater desalination system implementing GE’s patented ultrafiltration and reverses osmosis technology, a wastewater treatment plant, a 300MW combined cycle power plant, sea works, a tank farm, jetty works, pipelines, and auxiliary components.
Upon completion the complex is expected to meet local market needs for project products and downsizing the state imports of these products as well as creating export opportunities for productive materials, and resettling the industry.