The world's largest oil company plans to build a large petrochemical project in South Korea.

On November 17, Saudi Aramco issued a statement that it planned to invest US $7 billion (about 50 billion yuan) in the plant of its subsidiary, South Korea's Ssangyong Oil, to produce more high-value petrochemical products.

S-Oil is an oil refining enterprise in South Korea. Saudi Aramco owns more than 63% of its shares and is its holding company.

Saudi Aramco said in the statement that the project, named "Shaheen (Eagle in Arabic)", is the largest investment of Aramco in South Korea, aiming to build a large integrated refinery and one of the largest petrochemical steam cracking units in the world.

The construction of the new plant will start in 2023 and be completed in 2026. Saudi Aramco said that the annual production capacity of the plant will reach 3.2 million tons of petrochemical products.

The petrochemical steam cracking unit is expected to process by-products from crude oil processing, including the production of ethylene from naphtha and waste gas. The unit is also expected to produce propylene, butadiene and other basic chemicals.

The statement pointed out that after the completion of the project, the output of petrochemical products of S-Oil will double to 25%.

Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, said in the statement that the growth of global petrochemical demand is expected to accelerate, partly because the consumption of petrochemical products in Asian economies is growing. The project can well meet the growing local demand.

On the same day (17th), Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia visited South Korea and is expected to discuss future cooperation between the two countries. Earlier on Thursday, business leaders of the two countries signed more than 20 memorandums of understanding between governments and enterprises, including infrastructure, chemicals, renewable energy, games and other fields.

According to the Fortune Global 500 list released in August this year, Saudi Aramco ranked sixth in terms of revenue and first in the world in terms of profits, surpassing Apple.

In the third quarter of this year, Saudi Aramco's revenue reached 144.99 billion US dollars (about 1.06 trillion yuan), a year-on-year increase of 51.4%; Net profit reached 42.4 billion US dollars (about 308.8 billion yuan), up 39.4% year on year.