We believe that the naphtha can remain dear

An hour's drive north of Doha, the capital of the Qatar, the city of Ras Laffan emerges a desert of caillasse. In the absence of oasis, are groves of pipes that appear. A vast industrial puzzle in which Total comes to add a new piece. The French oil tanker opened yesterday on the spot the largest worldwide ethane cracker.

Able to produce 1.3 million tonnes of ethylene per year, the facility will enable feeding the polyethylene plant in Mesaieed, South of the Emirate. This facility opened in November is developing petrochemical products used in the manufacture of flexible plastics, used for food films or tubes of toothpaste.

The group led by Christophe de Margerie holds 22 of the new cracker, alongside the national company Qatar Petroleum and American Chevron Philips. This $ 1.2 billion project also includes a 133 km pipeline that already links the two sites.

Why a settlement in the North, then the polyethylene plant is South of the Emirate It is to take advantage of a cheap raw material, ethane, which comes from the North Field, the largest field of natural gas in the world. Discovered in 1971, the deposit has propelled a large State such as Corsica to the world's third largest gas reserves (behind the Russia and the Iran), with a volume estimated at 25,000 billion metres cubic.

Competition with American

The bulk of the production of North Field, consisting of methane is liquified by Qatargas, a society in which the Canadiens Group also has shareholdings. "Total is present in the Qatar since 1935. "Our presence both in upstream, with the Al-Khalj scope, than in the downstream, with the Ras Laffan condensate refinery, makes us a trusted player in the country", Philippe Guys, Director General of the Qatar the exploration-production analysis. But competition is tough with the Americans, first investors in the Emirate. ExxonMobil has indeed signed early January an agreement with Qatar Petroleum for $ 6 billion petrochemical complex, which must be implemented in 2015 and whose production, as the Total, will tour to Asia. In the polymers (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene), "Asia represents 48 of global demand in 2020, compared to 36 in 2000", anticipates Bryan Canfield, Vice President of Total Petrochemicals.

Ethane in the Middle East also presents an economic interest compared with oil from naphtha. "We believe that the naphtha can remain dear." "Our strategy is therefore to increase the flexibility of our supply of petrochemical raw materials," explains François Cornélis, Executive Director of the chemistry of Total. It has reduce the share of naphtha in supply of petrochemical plants in the group here from 70 to 50 by 2015.

As from margins of naphtha transformation risk of the proliferation of facilities. According to analysts cited by Bloomberg, they could drop to $ 150 per tonne at the end of the year, more than 400 dollars in the first quarter. By 2013, the Middle East, China and Singapore industrial will increase their capacity of 26 million tonnes to 144 million, or 13 more than in 2008.

Shell thus inaugurated yesterday a new complex at Singapore, capable of producing each year 230,000 tonnes of benzene (for rubber), 800,000 tonnes of ethylene and 450,000 tonnes of propylene. This latest product is currently very requested, because it can produce polypropylene, a hard polymer used in the automotive or aeronautics. With as a consequence of the tension on prices: "last month, for the first time, the cost of propylene has exceeded that of ethylene", observed François Cornélis.