Total SA, Europe’s third biggest oil company, said it’s not interested in expanding its chemical business in the Arabian Gulf beyond Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
“We are not looking for any other country at the moment apart from Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” Francois Cornelis, Total’s president of chemicals, said in an interview today at a petrochemicals conference in Dubai.
Saudi Aramco is seeking global partners to develop specialized chemicals products from its refineries, Aramco’s Chief Executive Officer Khalid al Falih told the conference. He wants to see chemical and petrochemical sales from the region grow fivefold to $200 million in the next decade.
Total is in talks with Aramco to produce chemical products, Cornelis added. Total is also in early discussions on another steam cracker in Qatar to produce petrochemicals from available natural gas, said Burkhard Reuss, a spokesman for the Paris based company said.
Qatar, the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, is in talks with Total and Royal Dutch Shell about the possible construction of a $6 billion petrochemical complex if Exxon Mobil Corp pulls out.
Exxon Mobil had planned to build the world’s largest steam cracker with an annual capacity of 1.6 million tons, plus a 700,000 ton a year ethylene glycol plant, and two 650,000 ton a year polyethylene plants.
The mixed feedstock cracker will use ethane, propane, and butane to create products that will be sold on the global petrochemical feedstock market.
Total owns stakes in four Qatari facilities that liquefy gas and is a shareholder in Qatar Petrochemical Co and Qatofin Co’s linear low density polyethylene plant.
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