Five days after the Shaybah Oil Field trip we had another spouses program. The Spouses Site Tour of the Sadara facility, click here to see my first post on Sadara. Dow Chemical Company and Saudi Aramco formed a 50/50 joint venture in 2011 to form the Sadara Chemical Company. Sadara will construct, own and operate a world-scale integrated chemical complex in Jubail Industrial City II, 80 miles north of Al Khobar. When completed it will be the largest petrochemical facility ever built at one time, it will consists of 26 manufacturing plants which will produce 100 products.

The program was a bus tour of the construction site, a welcome at the VIP tent, a presentation on the site and lunch. One bus from the Al Khobar area met two more buses from the Jubail area at the Sadara site entrance. We went on a 45 minute bus ride around the construction sites which gave us a wonderful opportunity to see this very impressive undertaking. This was another one of those special opportunities for many of the ladies to visit the site and see what their husbands do all day. Because of the ongoing construction and the secrecy surrounding the plants it is very hard for anyone to get on the site. Unfortunately pictures were not allowed to be taken while on the site. This will not be like the last post, very few pictures, mostly interesting facts about this historic project.

Putting it on the map Sadara zoom out for a wider view of the area

The below information was taken in part from the slide presentation during the luncheon. The project was broken down into 3 phases, in the first phase of the project a group from Dow and Aramco got together in 2007 to designed and spec out the production plants. In the second phase starting in 2011 a group was assembled to build the company from a sand lot. Their task is to build the infrastructure to be able to ship the first product. This is a list of what these men are doing, all from scratch, building utilities, waste handling, mixed feed cracker, aromatics, tank farm operations, site logistics, safety and security, maintenance, analytical labs, engineering, a marine terminal, procurement, warehousing, financing, IT, HR, transportation and offices and cantina. This phase should be completed mid 2015. A third group starting in 2014 will startup and operate the plants and company. ME is part of this third group.

Sadara is the largest chemical complex ever built at one time, total investment $20billion, consisting of 26 process plants. It is designed to produce 3 million tons of products per year, it will introduce 14 specialty chemical products for the first time in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, it will generate $6-$8 billion in sales revenue annually.

Dow is said to be a chemical companies, chemical company. Dow does not make products for the end user, it sells its products to other chemical companies who make products for the end user. Sadara will be the same as Dow. Here is a list of the market segments that Dow sells to, their products go into making specialty films, household products, polyurethane systems, adhesives and sealants, packaging and containers, paints and coatings, laminates, oil and gas chemicals,(pipeline protection, flow assurance and gas treatment), detergents, water treatment, electrical and electronics, (wire and cables, insulation) construction materials,(pipes, adhesives & sealants) misc compounding, furniture and insulation, (foam for furniture and bedding, foam insulation for appliances) and automotive (automotive parts & maintenance fluids).

This is the construction site staffing by the numbers as of today, 50,400 Sadara construction workers, 2,700 3rd party construction engineers and consultants, 1,300 Sadara employees for a total of 54,400people. There are 370 cranes on the site. There are 60 nationalities represented on the site. The plant has a better safety record then Dow Chemical based on recorded incident rates.

Dow will market and sell the majority of the products made by Sadara. Dow will use its global marketing expertise, strong brand recognition and well established market channels, along with Sadara’s strategic well-positioned location, to bring high-value products to new and existing customers in fast-growing regions. Roughly 60% of the products will be targeted to the Asia Pacific markets, the reminder will be sold in other key countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Africa and India.

Sadara will utilize several of Dow’s industry leading process technologies as well as its manufacturing and engineering work processes and tools to establish a reliable operation to manufacture products.

Dow is training 900 Sadara employees in an on-the-job training program in its own manufacturing sites around the world.

OK enough, the following pictures are taken off the world wide web again because we were not allowed to take any pictures of the construction site.

sign

this picture was taken from the bus before we were told we could not take pictures

I pulled this off the internet

also came from the internet on-going construction

map of Jubail Industrial Complex, Sadara is shaded in yellow, orange, blue and green

buffet lunch

dessert table

another map of the site

inside VIP Tent

on the return trip to Al Khobar we passed camels along the road