Egyptian company, GE sign $500m project agreement

Egypt's Carbon Holdings and General Electric Co signed a $500-million dollar agreement on Monday to provide support in the building of a liquid cracker at a petrochemicals complex on the Gulf of Suez. Trade and Industry Minister Munir Fakhry Abdel-Nour witnessed the agreement signing by Carbon Holdings' Basil el-Baz and GE vice chairperson John Rice. The naptha cracker project is part of the Tahrir Petrochemicals Complex. Carbon Holding is an industrial developer and operator implementing downstream and oil and gas projects in Egypt. Rice said that the company's commitment to Egypt "cuts across all of our businesses" and said he looked forward to more projects in Egypt. The two companies said that they would be providing "technology and equity support to the greenfield naphtha cracker and olefins complex project of Tahrir Petrochemicals in Ain Sokhna," an Egyptian energy hub. They said the new plant would have an annual production capacity of 1.36-million tonnes of ethylene and polyethylene and "significant quantities of propylene, benzene, butadiene and linear alpha olefins.