Total, Aramco In Talks Over New Jubail Cracker

France oil major Total is in talks with state Saudi Aramco to build a cracker at their joint refinery in the kingdom, an executive from Total Petrochemicals said on Tuesday.

Aramco and Total are building a 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) crude oil refinery in Jubail, on the Gulf's east coast of Saudi Arabia.

"We are working on the possibility of a multi-feed cracker, could be world scale, the largest possible, typically 1500 kilo tonnes per year (KTA) of ethylene and 500 KTA of propylene, plus derivatives," Michel Govaerts, general manager of businessdevelopment for Middle East and Asia at Total Petrochemicals told reporters on the sidelines of a MEED conference.

The refinery, which is export and domestic oriented, will produce 700,000 tons per year (tpy) of paraxylene, 140,000 tpy of benzene and 200,000 tpy of polymer-grade propylene.

"They could be combined or not combined," he said when asked about the existing petrochemical units.

Jean-Jacques Mosconi, head of strategy at Total said last week Total, under the joint-venture Satorp would be interested in expanding petrochemical output of their plant.