The Saudi-French CEOs Forum, which was held in Paris on Tuesday, witnessed the signing of 20 agreements and MoUs between French and Saudi companies and institutions worth more than $18 billion, in conjunction with the visit of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to France.
Saudi Aramco received the largest share of the value of the deals in an agreement with France’s Total for a petrochemical complex in Jubail Industrial City in eastern Saudi Arabia, with an investment of $9 billion.
A statement issued by Aramco said that the MoU with Total was for the joint development of a petrochemicals complex integrated with existing SATORP Refinery.
“The project will include a mixed-feed cracker that will leverage refinery naphtha and off-gases from SATORP, supplemented by regulated ethane and natural gasoline, to develop downstream derivatives,” the statement read.
Aramco said that the value of investment in the project was about $5.2 billion (19.5 billion riyals), and the two companies are scheduled to start preparing the initial engineering designs in the third quarter of this year.
Addressing the forum, Saudi Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser said: “Saudi Aramco has a massive and highly ambitious investment program over the next decade which is part of our portfolio expansion aspiration. This includes a number of mega world-scale projects where French businesses can play a major role in providing the strategic mix of technical capabilities and innovation which would create the desired synergy which will be beneficial to the company but also to the Kingdom.”
“With Vision 2030, I believe there are more opportunities for collaboration and partnerships, not only in the oil and gas sector but also in infrastructure, manufacturing and services industries which are critical to manage and operate an enterprise like Saudi Aramco,” he added.
“This project illustrates our strategy of maximizing the integration of our large refining and petrochemical platforms,” said Total’s chief executive Patrick Pouyanne.
