Al Rushaid Construction Co. Ltd., the joint venture of EEI Corp. and Al Rushaid Petroleum Investment Co. (ARPIC), has secured a contract to build a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant in Saudi Arabia worth about 800 million SAR (P11 billion).
The company has signed a contract for the construction of Advance Polyolefins Industry Co.’s (APOC) plant, as well as its utilities and off-sites last month. The PDH plant is in Jubail 2 Industrial City in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia.
EEI Corp. is an affiliate of the Yuchengco Group of Companies while ARPIC is a holding company in Saudi Arabia with over 50 affiliate local and international companies mainly in the field of oil and gas.
The company said work started this month and mechanical completion is by November 2023. Manpower is estimated to peak at 3,769.
It will carry out the civil, building, steel structure, mechanical, tank, piping, painting, electrical and instrumentation works of the project for a total of 25 months.
A PDH plant is a facility that produces propylene by removing hydrogen from propane while the utilities and off-sites consist of water and air essential to plant utility production facilities that produce steam, auxiliary facilities, and water treatment facilities. APOC has contracted Lummus Technology of the United States for licensing of its proprietary CATOFIN technology for the PDH plant.
The PDH facility that will be producing propylene will have a nameplate capacity of 843,000 tons per year, feeding two polypropylene plants of 400,000 tons per year each for the production of specialty polymers by manufacturers of face mask, automotive, pipes, food packaging and textile industries.
The plant will be constructed by another EPC contractor, Tecnimont. Propane feedstock will come from Aramco under a long-term contract.
EEI Corp. President and CEO Roberto Jose L. Castillo said the company has a pipeline of domestic and overseas projects that the company has won over the past few months despite the pandemic.
“EEI Corp. maintains a substantial backlog of projects that is sufficient to sustain the business in the next three to five years. But what’s more important is that we are well-positioned to win more contracts as we continue to bid for mega infrastructure projects here and abroad,” Castillo said.
This year alone, the company’s Saudi unit has already secured seven projects on top of the contract to build the PDH plant.
EEI also recently secured two contracts—one with Cebu Landmaster Inc. to build Masters Tower Cebu, a 40-storey mixed-used building within the Cebu Business Park and another with SM Development Corp., to build Sands Residences, a 52-storey tower in Malate, Manila.