Aramco-Petronas RAPID refinery offloads first oil cargo

The first crude oil cargo shipment for a joint-venture refinery project between Malaysia’s Petronas and Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil producer, will be offloaded on Monday, Reuters reported, citing Aramco Trading Company (ATC) CEO Ibrahim Al-Buainain.

“The first cargo is discharging out of a VLCC,” he said.

The very large crude carrier (VLCC) “Navarin” carrying 1 million barrels each of Saudi Arab Medium crude and Iraqi Basra Light crude arrived at Malaysia on Sept. 21 and is now moored off the Pengerang oil terminal.

The $27-billion Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID)  project has a 300,000-barrel-per-day refinery and petrochemical units with a capacity of 7.7 million tons a year. Refinery operations are set to begin in 2019, with petrochemical production to follow in six to 12 months.

“This is part of our downstream strategy. Asia is a key market for us and most of the demand is from this region,” Al-Buainain added.