State-owned Saudi Basic Industries Corp (Sabic) has announced forming a new joint venture with American downstream major ExxonMobil Chemical Company for their Gulf Coast Growth Ventures project in the US.

The project, which will be in Portland, Texas, is expected to include a 1.8 million tonnes ethane cracker, a monoethylene glycol unit and two polyethylene units.

The petrochemical project likely will cost about $10bn, according to previous reports. It is expected to create 600 permanent jobs, about 3,500 indirect and induced jobs during operations, as well as 6,000 construction jobs during the peak of construction.

The environmental permitting process still has to be completed before construction can begin, but the plant is expected to be operational around 2021 or 2022.

In April 2017, the companies said the project is expected to generate more than $22bn in economic output during construction and more than $50m during the first six years of operations.

The JV for the Texas petchem plant is the third for Sabic and ExxonMobil. The two companies already have two long-standing joint ventures in Saudi Arabia. Sabic is the operating partner for both JVs: Kemya in Jubail and Yanpet in Yanbu.