Improvement of Strategic Investment Decision Making Process in Petrochemicals Industry

Abstract

Joint ventures, commercial conglomerates, and public-private partnerships must go through various stages of planning prior constructing mega-petrochemical projects. One of the most important steps is the Final Investment Decision (FID). Before approving and ordering large-scale petrochemical project construction, corporations and project partners must follow these steps. FID comes after careful preparation and before project implementation. Market attractiveness, proven production technology, and high investment return affect FID. The project's investment return—determined by IRR, NPV, and PP—is the main factor. An approved FID shows the company's willingness to invest and make a profit, while an unapproved FID prevents further losses if the project goes ahead. NPV, IRR, and PP not meeting criteria prevents a final investment decision. Economic return failure is caused by high taxes, total investment costs, product spread, capital costs, and operating costs. This study aims to improve the current techno-economic model in the petrochemicals industry's final investment decision process by investigating the main parameters of existing FID techno-economic models, developing a new model for the industry, and validating its accuracy. This study began by populating relevant final investment decision criteria, assembling production technology techno-economic data, and determining techno-economic parameters. This study is expected to improve the current techno-economic model and allow more projects to achieve successful FID for long-term profit, while preventing further losses if the economic return is still unfavourable by incorporating sensitivity and real option analysis. An improved techno-economic model should meet the needs of the petrochemical industry and provide prominent outputs for business risk management by allowing precise input consideration.