Orpic Aromatic Plant's Benzene Output Grows by 51 Percent as Compared to Last Three Years

The Sohar-based aromatic plant of Oman Refineries and Petrochemical Industries Company (Orpic) has attained record levels in benzene and paraxylene production, which has grown by 51 percent as compared to last three year’s average production, Oman News Agency reported.
 
The production at the plant, which was constructed in 2009 and launched commercial operations in February 2010, has reached 93,000 tons.
 
Benzene and paraxylene produced at the said plant are shipped to several Asian countries through the Sohar Port.
 
The plant incorporates most advanced technologies for aromatic production, which helped it attain around 90.4 percent capacity utilization levels during 2011 and 2012.
 
According to the general manager of the aromatic plant, Kamel al Shanfari, the production hike is mainly attributable to the experience that the plant gained from rising understanding of the aromatic process and future insight. The understanding and experience would help the parent company to grow into one of the world’s largest integrated petrochemical complexes.
 
Presently, Orpic contributes around US$ 1.5 billion to Oman’s annual revenues from exports.
 
Orpic’s partner firm, Oman International Trading Company, also markets about one million tons of benzene and paraxylene to Asian and other countries.
 
Formed by integrating three companies - Oman Refineries and Petrochemicals Company LLC (ORPC), Aromatics Oman LLC (AOL) and Oman Polypropylene (OPP) - Orpic is one of the biggest companies of Oman as well as one of the rapidly growing businesses in the Middle East’s oil industry.
 
In addition to the aromatics and polypropylene plants at Sohar, the Government-owned entity also operates refineries at Sohar and Muscat.