Saudi Aramco taps US startup to boost chemicals production

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco), the world’s largest oil exporter, has signed a deal to use a US-based startup’s chemical technology in new crude-to-chemical factories.

Saudi Aramco plans to use California-based Siluria Technologies Inc.’s process for converting natural gas left over from the crude-refining process into ethylene, the primary building block for plastics, the two firms said in a joint statement on Wednesday.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Siluria’s technology, known as oxidative methane coupling, is an alternative to the chemical industry’s traditional high-temperature method of processing gas, called cracking.

“Maximizing the output of high-value chemicals products from our future crude oil processing projects is one of the key objectives in our downstream technology strategy,” Ahmad Al Khowaiter, Aramco’s chief technology officer, said in the statement.

“We see a strong fit with Siluria’s “gas to olefins” technology in certain plant configurations, and look forward to collaborating further with Siluria to realize the value of these processes,” he added.