$750 million worth steel investment in Oman
The largest non-OPEC oil producer in the Middle East, Oman Sultanate signed a number of deals to start a steel project at Sohar Industrial Port which worth $750 million in total. The project will be conducted by the Shadeed Iron and Steel LLC, a company of Al-Ghaith Group of Abu-Dhabi. The steel project consists of three phases. The establishment of processing industries which include factories for plain and deformed reinforcing steel bars, merchant bars (angles, flats, rounds, squares hexagonal and small profiles) are planned to be constructed under the scope of the project. Shadeed Iron and Steel LLC will produce approximately 720'000 tones of HDRI/HBI (Hot Direct Reduced Iron/Hot Briquetted Iron), including 500'000 tones of billets by means of the Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) module by Midrex Technologies, Inc. and the Melt Shop of VAI FUCHS GmbH called Hamil Seel will the first plant to use Midrex HOTLINK technology in the world. The production capacity of the project will be 4 million pellets of iron ore and steel billets per year. It will consume 300'000 cubic feet of natural gas over a period of 20 years. Investment of $6.5 billion in developing industrial projects in Sohar including the mill, aluminum refinery and petrochemical plants to diversify Oman's economy and generate jobs for the citizens is aimed at. The port is 200 km away from Muscat.