Malaysia Petrochemical Complex Moves Ahead

Petronas has awarded contracts to several engineering firms for the construction of the Refinery & Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project, a massive $27 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in southern Malaysia. Japan’s Toyo Engineering, for instance, has won a $2.3 billion contract to build an ethylene cracker, a pyrolysis gasoline plant, a butadiene extraction unit, a benzene separation plant, and associated utilities. The award of the contracts follows a decision this spring by Petronas’s board to release funds for building RAPID, which is now scheduled to come on-line in 2019 instead of 2015 as originally planned. Several foreign companies plan to build chemical plants using basic chemicals from RAPID. Evonik Industries signed a letter of intent with Petronas in January 2013 to build facilities producing hydrogen peroxide, isononyl alcohol, and n-butene (C&EN, Jan. 28, 2013, page 9). In June 2012, Italian petrochemical producer Versalis tentatively agreed to build synthetic rubber facilities integrated with RAPID.