Eastern Petrochemical Company ‘Sharq’, an affiliate of the Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), has signed letters of intent to award contracts to three foreign companies for expansion projects that will add 2.8 million metric tons a year to SABIC’s petrochemical output. The new plants will be constructed at Jubail Industrial City, and are expected to be completed by mid-2008. Sharq is a joint venture equally owned by SABIC and SPDC Limited, a Japanese consortium led by the government of Japan and the Mitsubishi group of companies.

The foreign companies involved are U.K.’s Stone & Webster Limited, for construction of an olefins plant with an annual production capacity of 1.3 million metric tons of ethylene; South Korea’s Samsung Engineering Company Limited, for construction of an ethylene glycol plant with an annual production capacity of 0.7 million metric tons; and Germany’s Linde, for construction of a linear low and high density polyethylene plant with an annual production capacity of 0.8 million metric tons.

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