Saudi Arabia's Methanol Chemicals Company (Chemanol) announced on Monday that it had awarded the preliminary engineering design contract to expand its methanol plant.

Located in Al Jubail Industrial City, Chemanol is one of the world's largest formaldehyde producers situated in a single location with a total annual production capacity of one million metric tonnes.

Chemanol said in an Arabic language stock exchange statement that it had received clearance from the Ministry of Energy to allocate the necessary feedstock for increasing the annual production of its methanol plant by about 100,000 tonnes to 331,000 tonnes.

The statement didn't disclose the engineering design consultant's name or contract value but said the agreement had been signed with the company that owns the technology for the current methanol plant.

In August 2006, Saudi English-language newspaper Arab News had reported that Saudi Formaldehyde Chemical Company Ltd (Chemanol's previous name) had awarded an engineering and procurement contract for methanol and carbon monoxide plants to a consortium of India's Larsen & Toubro and Denmark's Haldor Topsoe.

L&T had said in a press statement dated 24 August 2006 that under the $150 million contract, it would provide residual basic engineering, detailed engineering, project management, and procurement of the equipment and materials for the plant while the Danish firm will provide the process technology and the license for methanol and carbon monoxide process.

(Writing by SA Kader; Editing by Anoop Menon)
(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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