The Gulf Petrochemical Industries Company (GPIC) said it had reached its highest production levels in its history last year and would continue setting up more new and successful projects in the future.

The company was able to produce 429,000 tonnes of ammonia, 629,000 tonnes of urea and 417,000 tonnes of methanol to bring the total output to 1.475 million tonnes of petrochemicals, GIPC president Abdul Rahman Jawahery told directors at the company's meeting.

December witnessed the highest monthly production at the urea plant at 60,000 tonnes.

'Due to the global reputation of the company, high quality of products and superior plant reliability, GPIC was able to export 60,000 tonnes of ammonia, 611,000 tonnes of urea and 427,000 tonnes of methanol to bring the total exports to 1.098m tonnes of petrochemicals,' he said.

He said that the CO2 unit, which was launched by GPIC in December 2009, and which is the first plant of its kind in the Middle East, successfully completed its first year of operations and contributed to increasing the output of the methanol and urea plants by approximately 60,000 tonnes during the year and with a 22 per cent return on investment.

This project, he said, is consistent with the policies of the country's leadership and the Economic Vision 2030.

The company would continue setting up more new and successful projects in the future as soon as the required quantities of natural gas were available for such new expansion projects, he added.

During the meeting, the board approved the company's 2011 budget and discussed the strategies related to the progress of operations to maintain the high level of performance achieved during 2010.

Jawahery said the production operations were exemplary during the year as the company's plants continued operating without any disruption.

This steady operational level was due to completing the regular shutdown maintenance early in the year which increased the plant reliability level and prevented any breakdowns or disruption of production operations, he said.

He added that strict compliance with safety standards had a significant impact upon achieving this high and excellent performance.

'GPIC employees were able to achieve more than nine million man-hours without accidents lost time during the year while the total number of hours achieved by the employees and contractors was more than 12m man-hours without accidents lost time,' he added.

'Moreover, we were able to win the International Safety Award from the British Safety Council for the third successive time and the Chemical Sector Award from the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents, UK.'-TradeArabia News Service