Oil trader Wellbred Trading DMCC plans to build a refinery in Saudi Arabia to process waste chemicals into gasoline components and fuels for blending.
(Bloomberg) —
Oil trader Wellbred Trading DMCC plans to build a refinery in Saudi Arabia to process waste chemicals into gasoline components and fuels for blending.
Rabigh Refining & Petrochemical Co. has signed a non-binding agreement to supply waste chemicals from its complex on the Red Sea coast for the trader to convert into energy products, Wellbred Chief Executive Officer Ghazi Abu Al-Saud said in an interview.
Wellbred currently trucks around 5,000 to 10,000 tons a month from that complex to a small refinery in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates for processing. It wants to divert those flows to the new Saudi facility to be built near Petro Rabigh’s complex, which would be able to process around 100,000 tons per year. Wellbred would therefore avoid having to transport the volumes a long distance.
The plans will require Saudi government approval and the refinery could be operating within two years, according to Wellbred. It will either finance the construction costs on its own or use some funding from other sources, Abu Al-Saud said.
Wellbred hired Nasser Al-Mahasher as chairman for its Saudi operations a year ago and intends to open an office in either Riyadh or the Eastern Province in the next couple of months, Abu Al-Saud said. Al-Mahasher was previously CEO of Petro Rabigh and worked for S-Oil Corp., a Korean refiner controlled by Saudi Aramco, according to Wellbred.
Petro Rabigh didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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