Thailand's IRPC expects to begin commercial operations of a new aromatics complex at Rayong in the fourth quarter of 2022, the company said in a presentation.
The complex falls under the company's "Mars" or "maximize aromatics" plan to use IRPC's excess naphtha, toluene and xylenes as feedstock to maximize its production of paraxylene and benzene.
Overall feedstock requirements have been estimated at 1.3 million-1.5 million mt/year.
The complex will be able to produce 1 million mt/year of PX, 300,000 mt/year of benzene and 200,000 mt/year of other products such as LPG and raffinate, for export and captive use.
The basic engineering design, front-end engineering design and engineering, procurement, and construction stages are expected to be completed over 2018-2020.
Construction is expected to begin in 2020 on the complex, which will cost about $1 billion-$1.1 billion.
On Wednesday, Thailand's state-owned oil and gas company PTT Public Company Ltd announced that it had raised its stake in IRPC to 48.05% from 38.51% after buying 1.95 billion IRPC shares from the Government Savings Bank for Baht 13.84 billion ($437.9 million).
PTT said it expects to complete the purchase of the shares by the end of February.
