Saudi Basic Industries Corp. agreed to buy out Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s 50% stake in a petrochemical joint venture for $820 million, marking the third project with Saudi Arabia’s largest companies that the Anglo-Dutch company has exited since 2014, Bloomberg reported. Sabic will take over full ownership of the Saudi Petrochemical Co. venture, or SADAF, it said in a statement Sunday. The Middle East’s biggest petrochemicals producer and Shell are ending their partnership earlier than its planned 2020 expiration, they said. SADAF has six petrochemical plants with total production of about four million metric tons a year, they said. Shell’s acquisition of BG Group Plc last year has turned its attention to existing assets and is sending “mixed signals about its desired role” in the Middle East, Arab Petroleum Investments Corp., the investment arm of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, said in a report last week. Shell ended plans to build a $6.5 billion petrochemical plant in Qatar in 2015 and last year exited a natural gas venture in Abu Dhabi as the downturn in oil prices and the cost of developing the resources made those projects too expensive.
