NEWS OFTHEWfEEK PETROCHEMICALS
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Sumitomo and Aramco plan $4.3 billion petrochemical complex
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AUDI ARABIAN OIL CO. (SAU-
di Aramco) and Sumitomo Chemical plan to spend $4.3 billion on a large petrochemical complex and oil refinery in Rabigh, Saudi Arabia. The project will be Sumitomo's first major in vestment in the Middle East and its first foray into oil refining. Aramco, conversely, has limited experience in petrochemicals. The two companies are still working on a detailed feasibility study They expect that total in vestment in the project, due to go onstream in 2 0 0 8 , will exceed $4.3 billion after needed utilities and other infrastructure are built. Sumitomo's planned petrochem ical project with Shell in Singa pore will be on hold until a final decision is made on the Saudi proj
IMMIGRATION
ect, a Sumitomo spokesman says. The Saudi project would be one of the largest integrated re finery/petrochemical complexes ever built at one time, the part ners say It would involve adding petrochemical plants to the 400,000-barrel-per-day Aramco refinery already operating in Rabigh. The refinery, to be trans ferred to the proposed venture, is Saudi Arabia's largest, according to the spokesman. The petrochemical plant would include an ethane-based cracker producing approximately 1.3 mil lion metric tons of ethylene and 900,000 metric tons ofpropylene per year. There would also be two linear low-density polyethylene plants with a combined capacity ofup to 900,000 metric tons, two
POLICY
VISA WARNINGS Leaders want government to fix the U.S. visa process
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ITHOUT IMMEDIATE Ac tion to improve its visa policy and processes, the U.S. risks irreparable damage to its higher education, scientific, economic, and national security enterprises. That's the conclusion of more than 20 leaders in these areas who have signed a state ment sent last week to the White House and Capitol Hill. The statement, which con tains six recommendations, re flects "broad concern and broad commitment to work together with government and solve a problem that's been ongoing for more than a year," says Alan I. Leshner, CEO of the American HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
Association for the Advancement of Science. T h e statement is available at http://www.aaas.org/ news/releases/ 2004/0512visa.pdf Many surveys and other stud ies have documented a decline in the enrollment of foreign students in U.S. graduate departments of science and engineering (C&EN, April 5, page 67). Leshner adds that attendance by foreign scien tists at U.S. science meetings also continues to drop. Nils Hasselmo, president of the Association ofAmerican Univer sities, says the recommendations in the statement should be famil iar to officials at the State De partment and other agencies in
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THIRD LEG Rabigh is poised to join Yanbu and Al Jabayl as a major Saudi petrochemical center. plants producing up to 700,000 metric tons of various types of polypropylene, a propylene oxide unit implementing Sumitomo technology, an ethylene glycol plant, and a few other units. D o w Chemical and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) reportedly competed against Sumitomo for the deal.—JEANFRANCOIS TREMBLAY
volved in visa issuance. 'We've had quite a bit of interaction," he says. Hasselmo says he is optimistic that those agencies will respond positively to the recommenda tions, which he notes were gen erated precisely because "prob lems continue to occur with such regularity" "We greatly appreciate and welcome the recommendations provided in this statement," says an Office of Science & Technol ogy Policy official. The groups that have signed the statement—including the Ameri can Chemical Society—note that they are not opposed to efforts to bolster national security in light ofthe government's war on terror. "However," they say in the state ment, "we believe that some of the newprocedures and policies, along with a lack of sufficient resources, have made the visa issuance process inefficient, lengthy, and opaque."-WILLI AM SCHULZ
Hasselmo
Leshner C & E N / MAY 1 7, 2004
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