Sabic and Fujian to build world’s largest ethylene plant

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) and its Chinese state partner, the Fujian Petrochemical Industrial Group, are planning to build the megaproject in the Gulei Petrochemical Park. Gulei is a peninsula in the Chinese southeast province of Fujian, which juts out into the sea opposite Taiwan.
An investment agreement, in which the city government of nearby Zhangzhou is also involved as a third partner, has just been signed. The total investment volume of the project amounts to about 5.8 billion dollars (40 billion Chinese Yuan).
Fujian province, with its wealth of deep-sea ports, has declared the petrochemical industry to be one of the ‘three key industries’ in its economic strategy. The Gulei Petrochemical Park was approved by the central government in Beijing in 2006 and is one of the seven largest petrochemical sites in China.
In June this year, the provincial planning commission took another close look at the park and then approved the next project phase. According to the plans, by 2030 the park will have a refinery capacity of 50 million tonnes per year, ethylene production of five million tonnes per year and PX production of 5.8 million tonnes per year.
From the point of view of the Chinese national government, the new mega-project is another milestone in its long-term strategy to concentrate on the country’s petrochemical industry in modern industrial parks that are located far enough away from densely populated areas. Part of the population of the Gulei Peninsula had already been resettled a decade ago to make way for the chemical park.