SABIC awards $387 mln contract for new plastic plant

KHOBAR, Saudi Arabia, July 10 (Reuters) - Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) has awarded Spanish firm Dragados a $387 million contract to design and build a new 50,000 tonne-per-year polyacetal plant, SABIC said on Wednesday. Dragados will start engineering in August and the project for SABIC's National Methanol Co. is due to be completed in the first quarter of 2016, the chemicals company said in a statement. National Methanol, better known as Ibn Sina, is 50-percent owned by SABIC, one of the world's largest chemical companies, while Celanese Corp and an affiliate of Duke Energy Corp each have a 25 percent stake. China National Chemical Engineering Co (CNCEC), Taiwan's CTCI and South Korea's Hanwha Engineering had also bid for the contract. SABIC said in 2010 that the new facility, producing a plastic mainly used in the car industry, would require capital investment of nearly $400 million. (Reporting by Reem Shamseddine; editing by Tom Pfeiffer)