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Date(s) - 05 May 2008
12:00 am

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Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association (GPCA) recognized EQUATE Petrochemical Company’s overall efforts and role in relevant industrial sectors.

In its 3rd INSIGHT newsletter, GPCA noted EQUATE’s valuable participation in the Second Annual GPCA (GPCA) Forum in Dubai during December 12-13, 2007, which included the participation of 450 delegates representing private organizations and public bodies from around the world.

INSIGHT noted the comments of EQUATE President and CEO Hamad Al-Terkait during the forum, in which he said that petrochemical markets “are never going to be as good as today,” buoyed by strong demand growth, tight supply, and high prices.”

Al-Terkait, who is also GPCA’s vice chairman of GPCA, “told attendees, however, that the Mideast’s petchem industry must prepare for a ‘trough’ from 2008, when large volumes of petchem capacity are due on-stream in the region,” reported the newsletter.

The Mideast petchem industry will, as a result, be under pressure to maintain its competitiveness – currently based on the availability of cheap gas feedstock – in the years ahead, Al-Terkait said according to INSIGHT..

Al-Terkait said the region could maintain its competitiveness through diversifying its product portfolio, currently based mainly on ethylene and derivatives; investing more in Africa, “which is going to be a huge market;” streamlining its supply chain to reduce

logistics costs; focusing on core businesses; developing and training its workforce; and working to ensure reliability of supply by avoiding plant outages.

In addition, INSIGHT reported on EQUATE participation in a workshop, titled “Contractor Safety-Building Openness” organized by GPCA’s Safety, Health & Environment (SHE) Committee in Dubai on November 22, 2007.

The workshop was co-led by EQUATE Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S) Delivery Leader Prakash Nair and EH&S Personnel Safety Expert Sabir Damani, as well as SABIC’s security advisor Qasim Yunus.

The workshop highlighted issues relevant to “best practices for the industry and ways to identify key factors affecting safety performance during contractor prequalification, selection, mobilization and onsite supervision, as well as ongoing and end-of-contract evaluation,” explained INSIGHT.

GPCA’s INISIGHT can be obtained from here:  http://www.gpca.org.ae/newsletters.asp