The Yasref refinery, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec, shipped its first clean diesel cargo from Yanbu on the Red Sea coast this week.
Yasref said in a statement it loaded 300,000 barrels of diesel from the refinery and while it did not specify where the cargo is headed, industry sources told Reuters it will most likely be shipped to Jeddah or Egypt.
The 400,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) refinery is currently running at about 60% of capacity and “may ramp up production and run at full capacity in a month”, a source close to the company told Reuters.
Yasref, which ran trials in September, is the second refinery to start up in Saudi Arabia in the past two years and “will complete state company Saudi Aramco’s transformation into a leading exporter of diesel”, media reports have said.
Once operating in full capacity with its secondary units running, the refinery will produce 263,000 bpd of diesel, 90,000 bpd of gasoline, 6,200 tonnes per day of petroleum coke, 1,200 tonnes a day of pelletized sulphur and 140,000 tonnes a year of benzene.
Saudi Aramco, which holds 62.5% share of output from the mega refinery, will mark the first cargo.
Sinopec holds the remaining share and will focus on exporting diesel shipments to Europe and East Africa.
