SADAF is a joint venture between Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) and Pecten Arabian Ltd., an affiliate of Shell Oil Company USA.
SADAF wanted to build a grassroots ethylene-based petrochemical complex. The 500-acre complex was to be comprised of six process units, utility systems, offsites, and general auxiliary facilities.
The SADAF project is located in Madinat Al Jubail Al Sinaiyah, or Jubail Industrial City, which is on the Arabian Gulf about seven miles north of the town of Jubail. Jubail Industrial City is a planned, integrated conglomerate of primary industries, secondary and support industries, infrastructure systems, and a housing community. Other locations on the site were designated for primary industries and for a full range of secondary and support industries.
The complex was a major part of the downstream investment planned for Saudi Arabia's east coast. It produces ethylene, ethyl-benzene, styrene, ethylene dichloride, chlorine, caustic soda, and crude industrial ethanol. It depends, in large part, on feed streams from the gas-gathering project done by Fluor for the Aramco gas program. The complex, in turn, would provide some of the output to feed Al Jubail Petrochemical Company's nearly linear low density polyethylene plant, also a Fluor project.