Royal Dutch Shell signed a deal with Iraq on January 28 to build a petrochemical plant in the Basra oil hub, located in the south of the country, and have it up and running in the next five to six years.
The Nibras complex, as it will be called, will make Iraq the largest petrochemical producer in the Middle East.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced last week that the Nibras complex will be, “One of the largest investments [for Iraq] and the most important in the petrochemical sector,” according to a January 2015 Reuters article. He also said that the plant will be capable of producing 1.8 million tons of product annually.
In the same article, a Shell spokesman told Reuters that, “Shell has been working with the Iraqi ministries of industry and minerals and jointly with the ministries of oil and transport to develop a joint investment model for a world-scale petrochemical cracker and derivative complex in the south of Iraq.”
Currently, Shell has a major presence in southern Iraq, operating the Majnoon oilfield and leading a joint venture with the Basra Gas Company.