Exxon, Qatar to build $6b plant

Doha: Exxon Mobil Corp and state-controlled Qatar Petroleum agreed to build a $6 billion (Dh22 billion) plant to produce chemicals for export to Asia, the biggest energy project announced in the Gulf country in three years.

The plant is scheduled be completed in 2015, the companies said yesterday at a press conference in Doha. Exxon will hold a 49 per cent stake in the project, which will have a 1.6 million-tonne-a-year steam cracker, two 650,000-tonne polyethylene plants and a 700,000-tonne ethylene glycol plant.

"The biggest growth in the world petrochemical markets is in Asia Pacific, and certainly China being the biggest piece of that," ExxonMobil Chemical Co. President Stephen Pryor said.

Products will be targeted toward Asia Pacific "first and foremost," he said.

Exxon aims to raise chemical production capacity in the Middle East and Asia by as much as 50 per cent in six years, Pryor said.

Global demand for "workhorse" petrochemicals such as polyethylene, polypropylene and paraxylene will rise 2 per cent more than world economic growth in the next 10 years, he said.