Abstract

The Petrochemical Industry is one part of the chemical industry producing chemical products from petroleum hydrocarbon (oil & natural Gas). It consists of three centres or complexes of industries; nitrogen fertilizer complex, olefins complex and aromatics complex. And recently, new side activities are LNG plants.

In Indonesia, the petrochemical industry was started with an urea plant at Palembang (PUSRI I, 100 MTPY) in 1963 and then followed by the nitrogen. fertilizer complex at Gresik in 1972.

At the present time, after 10 years of development, urea production has increased to more than 1,5 MMTPY and the LNG plants started in operation recently at Badak in 1977 and at ARUN in 1978.

So, in fact the nitrogen fertilizer complex and LNG plant are developed and are still growing, but from the point of view of olefins and aromatics derived products, this petrochemical industry until now is still in the infant stage of development.

Market analysis shows that in 1978 more than 100,000 MT of basic & intermediate petrochemical products and about 140,000 MT of thermo setting plastic were imported into Indonesia. It is sufficient to consider building up the olefins and aromatics complex.

A fully integrated petrochemical complex means to optimize the steps of vertical and end products integration (up stream, intermediate and down stream) the petrochemical complex must be capable of supplying the raw material for additional industries (plastics & synthetic fibre). For this, the role of government is the determining factor.

To optimize plant capacity and their long range planning, we must consider the present situation in Indonesia.