ADNOC and Borealis Give Final Nod on Borouge 4
Abu Dhabi National Oil (ADNOC) and Borealis have signed the final investment agreement for their Borouge 4 complex at Ruwais, Abu Dhabi. The deal confirms their intent to spend $6.2 billion on the project, which will consist of a 1.5 million t/y ethane cracker, two PE plants producing 1.4 million t/y and a 100,000 t/y cross-linked PE plant.
Borouge 4 will offer differentiated polyolefin products for energy, infrastructure and advanced packaging applications to meet growing demand across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the partners said. They added that Borealis’s Borstar technology, combined with hexene co-monomer, will enable the production of advanced packaging grades with up to 50% recycled PE content.
During the past couple of years, the companies have signed contracts with several contractors, including WorleyParsons for project management consultancy, Axens for the 1-hexene plant and Tecnimont for front end engineering and design services.
Once operational, by the end of 2025, the facility will be the world’s largest single-site polyolefin complex, also supplying feedstock to the Ta’ziz industrial chemicals complex, which is a joint project being implemented by ADNOC and ADQ. There are also plans – subject to an in-depth study – to add a carbon capture unit that would reduce CO2 emissions by 80% and could be operational in time for the startup of Borouge 4.
The first Borouge facility, producing 450,000 t/y of PE was commissioned in 2001. Borouge 2 and 3 lifted polyolefin (PE/PP) capacity to 2 million t/y and 4.5 million t/y in 2010 and 2014, respectively. Borouge 4 will expand polyolefin production to 6.4 million t/y.
Author: Elaine Burridge, Freelance Journalist
