SINGAPORE: Saudi Arabia's new 60,000 bpd petrol-making unit at its Rabigh refinery will come online between end-September and early-October, a source said yesterday.

The unit is part of the 400,000-bpd PetroRabigh refinery, which is linked to the $10 billion joint-venture petrochemical complex between Saudi Aramco and Japan's Sumitomo Chemical.

"This unit is likely to come up in about two months, or thereabouts," the source said.

The complex is able to produce all types of oil products, except petrol, before the addition of this new project.

The petrol is expected to be consumed by the growing domestic market, but some could even be exported.

The upgraded PetroRabigh petrochemical complex will produce 18.4 million tonnes of oil products, 1.3m tonnes of ethylene and 900,000 tonnes of propylene annually. Fuel oil traders said the addition of the petrol unit will lead to a drop in fuel oil output. The refinery currently yields about 38 per cent of fuel oil, and supplies the bulk of the fuel for power generation in the kingdom.

"They will optimise their operations and there will be less fuel oil produced," a Singapore-based trader said.