Duqm Refinery and Petrochemicals Industries Company (DRPIC) has announced the suspension of the front end engineering design (FEED) work for its proposed Duqm Petrochemical Project (DPP), as it seeks to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the DPP’s economics.

The Duqm Petrochemical Project is the second stage of the integrated refinery and petrochemical complex planned by DRPIC in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm, which comes as part of the strategic partnership between OQ and Kuwait Petroleum International.

The DRPIC board concluded that a suspension of the project’s FEED work is in the best interests of the company during a time of unprecedented global economic uncertainty due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, depressed demand, and highly volatile commodity prices, a press statement issued by DRPIC on Tuesday said.

‘The shareholders intend to reevaluate the project against the current challenging global market environment and to seek opportunities to enhance the value of the project,’ DRPIC said.

Meanwhile, the construction work on the Duqm Refinery project continues to progress towards completion and the current overall progress stands at 72 per cent, the statement added.

Announced in 2019, Duqm Petrochemical Project is a strategic partnership between OQ and Kuwait Petroleum International. The project was aimed to be constructed next to the Duqm Refinery in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm, located in the Al Wusta Governorate.

Duqm Petrochemical Project aimed to produce new and advanced chemical products for the first time in Oman, including ethylene glycols, oxo chemicals and butadiene. The addition of these chemical products serves to diversify the existing petrochemical portfolio of both shareholders and complement their product portfolio with cleaner, more cost-efficient, and technically superior chemical products.