I am in the Saudi Pavilion now and we would be walking through a few of the efforts that have been made by Saudi firms such as Aramco and SABIC towards attaining net zero and decarbonization goals. More so, we will visit Jubail CCUS project and the SABIC carbon capture plant which will provide additional information on what is available for different CCUS technologies within Saudi Arabia.

Here’s a prototype of the SABIC carbon capture and utilization plant. The largest CO2 capture and purification facility in the world belonging to SABIC is UNITED its manufacturing affiliate based in Jubail. It has capacity to recover 500,000 tons CO2 emissions p.a from ethylene glycol production which would otherwise have been released into the atmosphere. This is equivalent to more than 11 million trees which should be planted to absorb it.

Purified CO2 is transported via pipelines to various plants that produce goods like urea for agricultural use, liquid CO2 for food and beverage industry or methanol that serves as a basic building block for countless other chemicals used daily by human beings. The network enables SABIC to maximize resource efficiency by enabling integration between multiple sites.

I'm standing in front of the prototype of the Jubail CCUS hub that will be capturing about 9 million metric tons of CO2 and storing it underground in saline aquifers by 2027. This is a joint venture of Aramco, SLB, and Linde and was signed in 2022 to be completed by 2027.