The National Oil Corporation (NOC), Libya’s state-owned oil company, has approved the reactivation of the ethylene plant in the industrial complex of Ras Lanuf, in the Gulf of Sirte, after a standstill of over ten years.
This was announced by NOC in a statement on Monday, in which it said that chairman, Farhat bin Qadara, and the members of the board of directors, “praise all the efforts made to reactivate the plant”.
The Ras Lanuf Oil and Gas Manufacturing Company confirmed that all phases of the operations are carried out step by step and gradually, in accordance with the procedures and requirements for the safety of operations, up to the production stage.
The NOC subsidiary indicated that it has reached an “advanced stage of the complex’s restart plan, despite the force majeure, exceptional and difficult circumstances and campaigns of distortion, skepticism and frustration”.
The Ras Lanuf ethylene plant was designed using US Stone Webster technology and has an annual capacity of 330,000 tonnes of ethylene. The facility was inaugurated on April 15, 1987 by a Yugoslav company and the operations were transferred to the Ras Lanuf company with Libyan cadres during the year 1992.
It is largest plant for the production of petrochemical products in North Africa.