GACIC awards Butanediol project to Aker Kvaerner

Gulf Advanced Chemical Industries Company (GACIC) has confirmed its intent to enter into a contract with Aker Kvaerner to provide engineering, procurement and construction, including commissioning and start-up services, for a 75,000 tonnes per annum Butanediol (BDO) plant in Al Jubail, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

When the contract is fully realised, Aker Kvaerner expects its involvement in the project to be in the range of USD 140-150 million..

The 300,000 man-hours project will be executed from Aker Kvaerner's Zoetermeer office in The Netherlands, using a combined team from the UK and Zoetermeer offices. The new plant will be based on technologies provided by Davy Process Technology, Huntsman Corporation and UOP.

Aker Kvaerner has signed an early work agreement to start key activities to ensure that the overall schedule is maintained. The full contract is expected to come into force in mid 2003. The project is scheduled to take 33 months from the start of the preliminary work, and plant start-up is expected in the fourth quarter, 2005.

This project is a part of the privately owned petrochemicals' complex being developed in Al Jubail by the Saudi International Petrochemical Company (SIPC). The venture will use Huntsman Corporation's proprietary butane-to-maleic anhydride (MAH) technology to convert n-butane to maleic anhydride. The MAH will then be used as a feedstock for the production of BDO via Davy Process Technology's MAH-to-BDO technology.