Week 51 in Review: Amiral commitment, mangroves aplenty, a Dhahran first in golf, and the World Cup wraps up

From the Amiral investment announcement to the Rolling Hills Country Club hosting its first ever tour event in Dhahran to the Aramco Board of Directors visit to the Ras Tanura Mangrove Eco-Park, the penultimate week of 2022 proved to be a newsy one.

Aramco, TotalEnergies commit to Amiral complex

Aramco and TotalEnergies have taken the final investment decision for the construction of a world scale petrochemical facility in Saudi Arabia.

The “Amiral” complex will be owned, operated, and integrated with the existing SATORP refinery located in Jubail on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast. The investment decision is subject to customary closing conditions and approvals.  

The petrochemical facility will enable SATORP to convert internally produced refinery off-gases and naphtha, as well as ethane and natural gasoline supplied by Aramco, into higher value chemicals, helping to advance Aramco’s liquids to chemicals strategy. 

The complex will comprise a mixed feed cracker capable of producing 1.65 million tons per annum of ethylene, the first in the region to be integrated with a refinery. It will also include two state-of-the-art polyethylene units using Advanced Dual Loop technology, a butadiene extraction unit, and other associated derivatives units.

The project alone represents an investment of around $11 billion, of which $4 billion will be funded through equity by Aramco (62.5%) and TotalEnergies (37.5%). Its construction is scheduled to begin during the first quarter of 2023 with commercial operation targeted to start in 2027.

Board gets up close look at Ras Tanura’s Mangrove Eco-Park

Aramco’s Board of Directors visited the company’s innovative Mangrove Eco-Park in Ras Tanura recently to celebrate the first public facility in the Kingdom dedicated to the preservation of mangrove forests. 

The 64-km2 park, which opened to the public in January, protects one of the last naturally occurring old growth mangrove forests in the Eastern Province and features the longest mangrove boardwalk (at 400 meters in length) in the Kingdom. More than 100 species of birds are observed within the park. 

Aramco’s Environmental Protection, Community Services, and Public Affairs teams collaborate to promote the park and attract visitors. The campaign is targeting annual visitation of more than 100,000 people, and initiatives include developing content across social media platforms to reach a target audience of 18 million. 

To date, more than 40,000 people have visited the park and have benefited from programming and educational initiatives to heighten awareness of mangrove forests and their unique benefits.

Aramco Invitational attracts top golfers to Dhahran

Nearly 100 top golfers from some 40 countries, including members of Saudi Arabia’s nation team, negotiated the manicured greens and undulating fairways of Aramco’s Rolling Hills Golf Club (RHGC) this past week in an effort to qualify for the prestigious Asian Tour.  

Competing in the Aramco Invitational golf tournament — a professional tournament on the Asian Development Tour — each player contributed to the already long and rich history of RHGC. For 57 years, Aramcons have whiled away many happy hours on the course, which has hosted invitational tournaments attracting players from across the Kingdom and region. But December’s three-day competition was a new milestone: the first professional golf tour event ever to be held in Dhahran.

Aramco, Sinopec, and SABIC expand refining and petrochemical cooperation

Aramco, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (“Sinopec”), and SABIC are exploring collaboration across refining and petrochemical projects in China and Saudi Arabia.

Aramco and Sinopec, one of the world’s largest energy and petrochemical corporations, have signed heads of agreement for a greenfield project in Gulei, Fujian Province, which plans to include a 320,000 barrels-per-day refinery and 1.5 million tons-per-year petrochemical cracker complex. It is expected to commence operations by the end of 2025. 

Additionally, Aramco, SABIC, and Sinopec signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Thursday (Dec. 15) to study the economic and technical feasibility of developing a new petrochemical complex to be integrated with an existing refinery in Yanbu’.

Meshal M. AlGhamdi and Hussain Alhilal split Aramco LIFE’s 2022 FIFA World Cup contest title

This week, we are announcing the winners for Prizes No. 2 and No. 3 of the Aramco Life World Cup competition as well as the final seven winners that were selected at random from the comment section of the World Cup page.

Aqeel A. Quraish, shift supervisor at Shaybah, won the SAR2,000 gift card for getting 15 correct guesses during the knock-out stage of the World Cup, beating seven of his colleagues who tied with 14 correct guesses. 

Meshal M. AlGhamdi, an electrical technician working in the East-West Pipelines Department, was one of the winners of the grand prize, a SAR5,000 gift card, for getting the most correct guesses in Aramco LIFE’s World Cup competition. 

Both Meshal and Hussain AlHilal, a technician in the Utilities and Facilities Services Department, got 41 correct guesses in total, they will both receive the grand prize for the World Cup competition.