PKN Orlen’s Gdansk refinery
Aramco pushes crude-to-chemicals frontiers
A trio of major project announcements signal the Saudi heavyweight’s renewed focus on maximising petchems yield
A brief post on the local Tadawul stock exchange by Saudi Aramco’s petrochemicals subsidiary Sabic in late November revealed the resurrection of potentially one of the most-significant projects in either firm’s history: the development of a huge crude-oil-to-chemicals (COTC) complex on the Kingdom’s east coast. Just a week earlier, the parent company’s South Korean joint venture, S-Oil, announced FID on a similar scheme first formally mooted five years ago—again designed to maximise the chemical yield from each barrel of oil. And plans for a more traditional refinery/petchems integration in Poland served to hammer home the message of a renewed Aramco push further downstream. The firm’s state
Also in this section
16 January 2026
The country’s global energy importance and domestic political fate are interlocked, highlighting its outsized oil and gas powers, and the heightened fallout risk
16 January 2026
The global maritime oil transport sector enters 2026 facing a rare convergence of crude oversupply, record newbuild deliveries and the potential easing of several geopolitical disruptions that have shaped trade flows since 2022
15 January 2026
Rebuilding industry, energy dominance and lower energy costs are key goals that remain at odds in 2026
14 January 2026
Chavez’s socialist reforms boosted state control but pushed knowledge and capital out of the sector, opening the way for the US shale revolution
