By Osama Jalal
DUBAI, Nov 29 (KUNA) -- Kuwait's Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) announced Wednesday a major step forward in its new petrochemical projects, of which plans to implement within the 2017/2018 period, including signing a preliminary engineering study contract for the polypropylene project in Canada.
The study contract was signed with the Canada Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (CKPC), one of most recent PIC's partners in North America, which is also equally owned by Canada's Pembina Pipeline Corporation, Waleed Al-Bader, Deputy Chief Executive Officer for Olefins and Aromatics at PIC, told KUNA.
Al-Bader made his remarks on the sidelines of PIC's participation in the second edition of the annual Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA) Forum in Dubai.
The polypropylene project in Canada is one of PIC's important strategic projects outside of Kuwait, he noted, adding that the project is being implemented in a country of a high economic competitiveness, which would boost Kuwait's international status in the petrochemical industry.
The project aims to build a production facility for hydrogen dioxide and a polypropylene manufacturer with a production capacity of 250,000 tons yearly, in addition to the main facilities, including the central facilities unit to feed the project in Alberta, Canada, said Al-Bader.
Meanwhile, Al-Bader revealed that PIC also plans to implement an aromatics project in Bahrain, consisted of aromatics complex, which will include a Paraxylene production unit with a production capacity of 1.4 million tons of Paraxylene.
The company is also studying a number of allocation opportunities in a number of influential shares in petrochemical projects in the United States and South Korea, he said, noting that PIC has also began to study economic and technical feasibilities for the fourth Olefins project in Kuwait.
He also indicated that PIC's petrochemical complex project in the United States, which aims to produce Ethylene glycol with a production capacity of 750,000 tons yearly, would be completed by end of 2019. (end) osj.ma