Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) has obtained the necessary approvals to set up the petrochemical joint venture Gulf Coast Growth Ventures project with US oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil in the US Gulf Coast.
The Riyadh-headquartered petrochemicals giant made the announcement in a 13 June filing on Saudi bourse Tadawul, noting that approvals for the project also included environmental permits.
Exxon said it expected to create 600 permanent jobs and roughly 3,500 indirect and induced jobs during operations, as well as 6,000 construction jobs during peak of construction.
Exxon announced the creation of the joint venture to develop the 1.8 million tonne ethane cracker plant project in San Patricio County, Texas in May 2018.
The facility, originally announced in 2016, will also include a monoethylene glycol unit and two polyethylene units.
Exxon said the plant is expected to become operational in a “2021-2022 timeframe”, according to its statement last year.
In its latest bourse filing, Sabic said it expected the project to have a “positive impact on its consolidated financial statements”, adding any financial impacts would reflected once the Texas project is up and running.
Sabic is already the operating partner for two long-standing joint ventures with Exxon Mobil in Saudi, Kemya in Jubail and Yanpet in Yanbu.
In March this year, state-held energy giant Saudi Aramco acquired a 70% stake in Sabic from the Crown Prince HRH Mohammed Bin Salman-led Public Investment Fund (PIF) in a transaction valued at $69.1bn (SAR259.1bn).
