Carbon Holdings Ltd. (CHL) of Egypt has let a contract to Drake & Scull International PJSC (DSI) for engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning (EPCC) activities related to utilities and offsite installations for the Tahrir petrochemical complex planned at Ain Sokhna, Egypt.
DSI’s scope of work under the contract—valued at about $599 million—will entail the complete outside battery limit (OSBL) construction works and civil works, which include but are not limited to storage sites and ancillary buildings, DSI said in a release.
Once completed, the Tahrir complex—which will be at the entry of the Suez Channel—will have a combined ethylene and polyethylene production capacity of about 1.4 million tonnes/year (tpy), making it the world’s largest naphtha liquid cracker as well as Egypt’s first .
The naphtha cracker also will have a capacity to produce 900,000 tpy propylene, 250,000 tpy butadiene, 350,000 tpy benzene, and 100,000 tpy hexane-1, according to DSI.
While the Tahrir project continues its wait to secure more than $3.4 billion in funding and loan guarantees from the US Export-Import Bank, Export-Import Bank of Korea, Korea Insurance Corp., and Italian export credit agency SACE, Carbon Holdings plans to begin construction on the project in 2015, DSI said.
Total investment required for the Tahrir petrochemical complex will amount to over $5 billion, according to DSI.
Carbon Holdings most recently awarded EPCC contracts for the Tahrir development to a consortium consisting of Maire Tecnimont SPA, Milan, and Netherlands-based Archirodon Group NV, with additional project management and technology contracts previously let to Foster Wheeler USA Corp, Univation Technologies, and GE.