The French contractor Technip has been awarded a contract to provide engineering and equipment for an ethylene cracking furnace at a petrochemicals plant in Saudi Arabia.

The contract is from CTCI, a Taipei-based EPC company with annual revenues of 7.6 billion Taiwanese dollars. CTCI won a $94.5 million contract from Saudi Kayan in February to build the cracker in Jubail Industrial City in the kingdom’s Eastern Province.

Saudi Kayan is looking to boost capacity at the plant to produce 93,000 tonnes of ethylene a year.

Technip says that it would use proprietary furnace technology that offers high-capacity gas cracking capability. The work will be carried out at Technips unit at Milton Keynes in the UK.

Stan Knez, the president of Stone & Webster a process technology business acquired by Technip in 2012, says: As the largest ethylene licenser and contractor, Technip is pleased that our furnace technology was selected for this important ethylene expansion project.

The technology has an outstanding track record with more than 60 installations for gas cracking in the last decade."

The project will be completed in the second half of next year.