San Miguel Corp. said it is building an integrated oil refinery and petrochemical plant worth between $15 billion and $20 billion in the southern part of the country.
San Miguel President and COO Ramon S. Ang told reporters after the company’s stockholders’ meeting on Tuesday the refinery and petrochemicals complex will have a capacity of 250,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd).
Ang said they have two foreign partners for the project, but he signed nondisclosure agreements that prevented him from disclosing the identities of these firms, as well as the corporate structure.
The project will be undertaken by a new company and not through subsidiary Petron Corp., the country’s largest refiner. The project will be built in the southern part of the country, on a property that is at least 1,000 hectares, he added.
Ang said they decided to build the refinery and petrochemicals plant in the south, as Petron already operates a refinery in Luzon.
“You don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket,” he added.
“We will break ground in six months. The only reason for the delay is that we are still buying more land because the complex will be big,” he said, adding that the complex should be operational in three-and-a-half years.
The petrochemicals business is more stable and profitable, he said.
“We realized that the condensation from the refinery can be used to produce petrochemicals. There is big domestic consumption of petrochemicals, as well as strong export potential,” he noted.
Petron is already exporting propylene, helping it generate P2 billion in profits every month, he said.
Aside from the new refinery and petrochemicals plant, Ang added they are also investing $800 million for the expansion of Petron’s existing refinery in Limay, Bataan, to 270,000 bopd, from the current 180,000 bopd, with the additional capacity mainly for the production of petrochemicals.
Ang said they are also considering expanding Petron’s refinery and petrochemicals plant in Malaysia, where the consumption is double that of the Philippines.
The company still has no estimate on the cost of the expansion as he is going to Malaysia on June 15 to look at their options there.
1 comment
All this came from Beer. SMC spends money like a drunken sailor . well spent .