Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) announced Sunday forming a joint venture with ExxonMobil to build an ethylene plant in Corpus Christi, Texas. It also proposed building a Houston headquarters for its Western Hemisphere operations as the Middle East’s dominant chemical maker seeks to capitalize on the US shale boom. The expansion of the companys business and facilities in the United States comes as part of efforts to expand its geographic presence and diversify the value sources of its global operations, giving it the ability to empower Vision 2030 and get closer to its customers in order to achieve its strategic objectives for the year 2025, SABIC said in a statement. "Today, we are moving our efforts to push SABICs business in the United States to a higher level as we have identified Houston as the center of all our operations in the Americas," said Dr. Abdulaziz al-Jarbou. For his part, Chief Executive Officer of SABIC Yousef al-Benyan said that SABIC plans to boost its production capacity 70 percent by 2025. “Increasing chemical production is crucial to Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 blueprint, which envisions creating higher-value products and jobs,” he added. The companys new regional headquarters comes in line with the growth of its operations in the United States and the expansion of its operations in the region as it has witnessed 20 percent growth in US manufacturing operations between 2013 and 2017. The proposed building is expected to take three to four years to complete and will include an innovation center and management offices with a capacity for 1,000 workers. SABIC is currently considering a proposal to build a $9bn petrochemicals plant with an affiliate of Exxon Mobil in Texas that could include an ethane cracker capacity of handling 1.8 million tonnes of material per year, it noted.