Amur GCP might become a global top-three ethylene producer - Sibur
BLAGOVESCHENSK. Sept 6 (Interfax) - The Amur Gas Chemical Plant (AGCP), the construction of which is planned in Amur Region, has every chance of becoming one of the world's top three producers of ethylene and its derivatives, the chief operating officer of Russian petrochemical company Sibur, Mikhail Karisalov said at the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).
"The plant's location in terms of costs, global competitiveness, is in the top three, maybe five plants that exist in the world. In Russia, unfortunately, such facilities for production of ethylene are not very developed," Karisalov said.
He said Sibur's main idea is to build a world class production facility with capacity of 1.5 million tonnes each of ethylene and its derivatives from the affordable resource of ethane that will be produced at the Amur Gas Processing Plant (Amur GPP; about 2 million tonnes). The company plans to produce low- and high-density polyethylene.
"Despite the fact that China is the world's factory for polymers and manufacturing products from them, I'm confident that in terms of competitiveness we have very good potential," Karisalov said.
The main problem that the plant faces is that such a large production facility needs highly qualified workers and the region where it is supposed to be built cannot currently provide them, he said.
"The demographic component, in other words the total number of people, their readiness to work at production facilities with a budget of 1.5 trillion rubles, which Gazprom is already spending, our project with a tentative budget of over 0.5 trillion rubles, is of course the main challenge. We want to focus on this. We're working on it," Karisalov said.
About 500 Sibur employees are already working in the Amur region. The project needs 15,000 builders and about 3,000 specialists from operating companies, he said.