Informed sources said Saudi Aramco was studying a $20 billion refining and petrochemical complex in Yanbu on the Red Sea coast.
The new refinery would have capacity of 400,000 barrels per day and stand beside Aramco’s wholly owned Yanbu refinery, which processes 240,000 barrels per day. It would also supply the proposed petrochemical complex.
Sources expected UK-based Amec Foster Wheeler to win the engineering and design contract. Amec Foster Wheeler declined to comment, while Aramco did not respond to a request for comment.
One source said the plans remained at an early stage and, if implemented, the project would be completed in 2023.
Aramco was integrating its refineries with petrochemical production as it developed downstream operations and expanded refined-products trading.
It was already building an ethane- and naphtha-fed cracker at a petrochemical complex in Jubail with Dow Chemical, at a cost of around $20 billion.
Aramco had disclosed the previous year that downstream investment would exceed $100 billion over the next decade and refining capacity would reach 8–10 million barrels per day in the coming years. At the time, it held a share equivalent to 5 million barrels per day in refining operations inside and outside Saudi Arabia.