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Taziz fulfils Abu Dhabi’s chemical ambitions at pace

8 October 2025

 

Taziz was created to extract more commercial value from Abu Dhabi’s hydrocarbon production by directing a portion of it to local third-party investors to use as feedstock to produce high-value chemicals – some of which had never been manufactured in the UAE before.

Four years since its establishment, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc Group) subsidiary has performed commendably in fulfilling its core mandate: attracting specialty chemical players to the country.

Taziz – a 60:40 joint venture of Adnoc Group and Abu Dhabi’s industrial holding company ADQ – is in the execution phase of six out of the seven projects it announced under the first phase of its sprawling chemical derivatives complex in Ruwais Industrial City.

The latest of the Taziz Industrial Chemicals Zone projects to make progress is Project Salt – a cluster of three plants that will produce ethylene dichloride (EDC), chlor-alkali and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).

The planned EDC plant will use chlorine from the associated chlor-alkali plant as its main feedstock and will have a production capacity of up to 1.2 million tonnes a year (t/y).

Part of the EDC output will, in turn, be used as feedstock by the PVC plant, which is planned to have a production capacity of 350,000 t/y. Surplus quantities of EDC and caustic soda from the chlor-alkali plant are intended to be exported.

A consortium of Chinese contractors – China National Chemical Engineering Company, China Chengda Engineering Company and China Tianchen Engineering Corporation – is the frontrunner to win the main contract for Project Salt, according to sources.

South Korean contractor Samsung E&A is understood to have been the only other bidder for Project Salt.

Taziz first announced the EDC, chlor-alkali and PVC plants in December 2021. India’s Reliance Industries was named as the main investor in the chemical plants at the time. Reliance is understood to have withdrawn from Project Salt and has been replaced by France-based Kem One.

Taziz Industrial Chemicals Zone

In addition to the three chemical plants planned under Project Salt, Taziz awarded Samsung E&A the main engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract in February to build the UAE’s first methanol plant in the Taziz Industrial Chemicals Zone.

The value of the EPC contract is $1.7bn, with a construction duration of 44 months.

The nameplate production capacity of the planned methanol complex is 5,000 metric tonnes a day, or 1.8 million metric t/y. Switzerland-based energy and chemicals company Proman is a joint investor in the project.

Separately, a joint venture of UAE-based Fertiglobe, South Korea’s GS Energy Corporation and Japanese investment firm Mitsui & Company has invested in a “world-scale” blue ammonia production facility in the Ruwais petrochemicals derivatives complex.

The Fertiglobe/GS Energy/Mitsui joint venture awarded Italian contractor Tecnimont the EPC contract for the project in May 2024. Construction on the facility started in June last year.

Fertiglobe has also planned an expansion phase of the blue hydrogen and blue ammonia production complex, to be developed under the second phase of the Taziz Industrial Chemicals Zone. Known as Project Rabdan, the new complex will use natural gas supplied by Adnoc – Fertiglobe’s parent company and majority shareholder – to produce up to 1 million t/y of low-carbon liquid ammonia, also known as blue ammonia.

The Rabdan facility will also have the capacity to produce 192,000 t/y of blue hydrogen and 892,000 t/y of nitrogen for supply to a local offtaker. In addition to the main blue ammonia production plant, the planned complex will feature units for hydrogen production and synthesis gas purification, as well as pipelines for the transport of feedstock gas, hydrogen and nitrogen. 

The Rabdan facility will have its own storage, export, utilities and offsite units, and will also tap into those from the wider Taziz ecosystem. A carbon capture and storage (CCS) system within the Rabdan complex will capture, compress and transport carbon dioxide emissions from its operations to a larger Adnoc CCS hub in Ruwais.

Adnoc/Fertiglobe had initiated a feed-to-EPC competition to deliver the Rabdan project in the first quarter of the year, with contractors submitting proposals for the contest in March. The project operators had even shortlisted India’s Larsen & Toubro Energy Hydrocarbon, Germany-based Linde and French contractor Technip Energies to participate in the feed-to-EPC competition for the project.

However, the prices submitted by the bidders for feed work were above Adnoc/Fertiglobe’s budget, leading to a stalemate. A final investment decision on Project Rabdan is now expected in 2026.

Adnoc Group downstream projects

Other downstream subsidiaries of Adnoc Group, particularly Adnoc Gas, continue to make progress with vital projects. Adnoc Gas recently received technical bids from contractors for EPC works on a major project to add a new gas processing train at its Habshan complex in Abu Dhabi.

Adnoc Gas, the natural gas processing business of Adnoc Group, processes about 10 billion standard cubic feet a day (cf/d) of gas across several sites, including its Asab, Bab, Bu Hasa and Habshan facilities, as well as a natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation plant at Ruwais.

The Habshan complex is one of the biggest gas processing facilities in the UAE, and in the Middle East and North Africa region. Its output capacity is 6.1 billion cf/d. The complex comprises five trains and 14 processing units that receive gas feedstock from onshore and offshore fields in Abu Dhabi.

With Adnoc Group pressing ahead with its P5 programme to raise oil production potential to 5 million barrels a day by 2027, high volumes of associated gas are set to enter the grid.

The new train at the Habshan complex, which Adnoc Gas expects to commission in 2029, will play a key role in handling these additional gas volumes.

Meanwhile, contractors have submitted technical proposals to Adnoc Gas for feed work as part of a design-update competition for a project to install a fifth natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation train at its Ruwais gas processing facility.

The fifth NGL fractionation train will have an output capacity of 22,000 tonnes a day (t/d), or about 8 million t/y. It will also include NGL fractionation facilities, downstream treatment units, sulphur recovery units, product storage, loading facilities and associated utilities. The scope also covers flares, interconnection pipelines with existing facilities, two propane liquefied petroleum gas storage tanks and one paraffinic naphtha storage tank.

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Indrajit Sen

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