Egypt’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Tarek El Molla, visited the petrochemicals projects in Alexandria governorate to follow up on the performance rate of the new projects and expansion plans, Egypt Oil&Gas reported. According to a press release issued by the Oil Ministry, Tarek El Molla pointed to the importance of these projects as they achieve the highest added value of oil resources. They also cover the needs of industrial firms that use petrochemicals that would otherwise make the companies reach out for costly imports.

The visit looked into one of the new projects for the national plan in the petrochemicals sector seeking to produce ethylene and its derivatives, with total investments of $1.93b.

Chairman of the company, Abdel Rahman Zeid, presented the success of the startup trials for the ethylene production plan, whose capacity amounts to 460,000 t/year, and the polyethylene plans, whose capacity is 400,000 t/year.

The minister also visited the production units of Sidi Kerir Petrochemicals Co. (SIDPEC). Chairman and CEO of the company, Osama Mahdy, presented the production rates of the ethylene plant, whose capacity is 300,000 t/year, in addition to 225,000 t/year of polyethylene, 10,000 t/year of butane, and 50,000 t/year of butane gas.

He added that the projects currently implemented include a recovery and liquefying unit of carbon dioxide and a new project for the production of ethylene and its derivatives in Port Said governorate.