Oman’s downstream expo advisory board holds meeting

Muscat: In preparation for the highly anticipated Oman Downstream Exhibition & Conference (ODEC) on April 15-17, 2019, the World Refining Association (WRA) and Omanexpo gathered senior stakeholders from the country and region’s downstream industry.
This included the Oman Ministry of Oil and Gas, Orpic and Duqm to formulate the topics of next year’s event and address the pressing challenges for the country.
In this exclusive closed-door meeting, an array of key themes were covered, which included: future outlook for the refining landscape beyond 2030; Full value chain integration between upstream, midstream and downstream sectors; creating a long-term strategy to promote investment to Oman and differentiate it from its GCC neighbours and moving towards increased petrochemical production in order to support the demand seen in China as well as India and Africa.
This included Orpic’s strategy to increase polypropylene and polyethylene production from 400,000 tonnes to 1.5 million tonnes by 2020; the allocation of gas from the recent discovery by Oman Petroleum Development (PDO) in the Mabrouk gas field; capitalising on the Industry 4.0 wave to optimise and maximise Oman’s technological capacity; development of talent to support Oman’s downstream sector; and promotion of Oman’s fertilizer industry.
From these discussions, it was concluded that there was a great opportunity for Oman to showcase itself to the global downstream community with lots of reasons to be optimistic for the industry’s growth in Oman over the coming years.
“We want to ensure that Oman Downstream Exhibition and Conference serves a real purpose for Oman and the Gulf region’s downstream industries. Only by ensuring that we drive innovative through an open exchange of ideas and year-round interaction could we achieve our purpose of advancing the industry and help drive the sector’s development,” said Rosie Brewster, Managing Director, WRA.
ODEC is the biennial flagship event dedicated to Oman’s downstream industry co-organised by Omanexpo and the WRA. Attracting local and international stakeholders through leadership and networking, the third edition of the event, set to be the best yet.
The participating companies included Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) Duqm Refinery Project, Oman Oil Company, Oman Oil Marketing, Ministry of Oil & Gas, Duqm Special Economic Zone Authority (Sezad), McDermott, SNC-Lavalin, KBC, Port of Duqm, Wood, McKinsey & Company, IHS Chemical, World Refining Association and Omanexpo.