SUPPLY AND DEMAND OF LIGHT NAPHTHA AS POTENTIAL PETROCHEMICAL FEEDSTOCK IN SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia is a major crude oil producer and exporter. Additionally, with the completion of its master gas gathering and treatment system petrochemical industries became the Kingdom's second major industrial sector. Currently, the Saudi petrochemical industry depends mainly on (C₁) methane and (C₂) ethane components of associated gas (AG) and natural gas (NG) as feedstocks. A variety of basic petrochemicals are now being produced principally by plants of the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC).

There is a necessity of enhancing the use of various under-utilized hydrocarbon resources. At present, one of the favored under-utilized resources and potential candidates for upgrading is light naphtha (LN). Because LN has the advantage of producing a more diverse petrochemical product portfolio than C₁ and C₂ components, it is expected that LN will assume an increasing importance as feedstock in the future development of petrochemical industries in Saudi Arabia. However, industrial opportunities for economies of large-scale production of petrochemicals based on LN might not be favored.

Saudi Arabia's chemical and petrochemical industrial sector has not yet been fully developed, and its production lines are not enough diversified to benefit from LN. The development and expansion of Saudi petrochemical industries usually follows the international trend in this sector, and benefits from its technological achievements. Worldwide global shift in the use of feedstock in this industrial sector will be reflected in the Saudi petrochemical industries. As the world trend is to maximize the utilization of under-utilized petroleum resources, one would expect optimization of LN utilization in Saudi Arabia in the near future.