South Korea’s S-OIL reportedly stated during an August 3, 2026 conference call that it would make “every effort to begin commercial operation in early 2027 with no change in schedule” for its Shaheen Project under construction at the Onsan National Industrial Complex in Ulsan.
The Shaheen Project is South Korea’s largest new petrochemical investment, developed as a joint venture with Saudi Aramco, and applies Thermal Crude to Chemicals (TC2C), the world’s first commercialized process of its kind for direct conversion of crude oil into petrochemical products. The EPC contract is structured as a turnkey agreement, meaning the additional cost burden from schedule adjustments is reported to be limited.
Total investment is approximately KRW 9.258 trillion, the largest petrochemical investment in Korean history. Upon completion, production capacity is planned at 1.8 million tonnes per year of ethylene, approximately 750,000–770,000 tonnes of propylene, 200,000 tonnes of butadiene, and 280,000 tonnes of benzene, along with polymer production facilities for products such as LLDPE and HDPE. The commercial startup target of early 2027 has been reaffirmed.
The TC2C process converts crude oil directly into petrochemical products, enabling production of ethylene and other outputs without going through conventional refining, and is regarded as a differentiated process compared to naphtha cracking (NCC) in terms of cost and energy efficiency.