Power-supply contracts let for $3-billion Louisiana petrochemical plants

South Korea’s Lotte Chemical Corp. and LACC LLC, Atlanta, a subsidiary of Axiall Corp. and Lotte Chemical USA Corp.’s 50–50 joint venture Eagle US 2 LLC, have let a contract to Entergy Louisiana LLC, Baton Rouge, La., to provide power to the companies’ two grassroots petrochemical plants in southwest Louisiana (OGJ Online, Feb. 11, 2014).

As part of the contract, Entergy Louisiana could supply as much as 30 Mw of power monthly to LACC’s proposed 1 million-tonne/year ethylene cracker project and 45 Mw of power to Lotte’s associated monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant, both of which are to be built on the same property in Lake Charles, La., the integrated energy company said.

Power supply will deliver to the separate plants from the company’s $159-million single transmission project currently under construction in the Lake Charles area, said Phillip May, Entergy Louisiana’s president and chief executive.

A subsidiary of Entergy Corp., New Orleans, Entergy Louisiana has operations in southern, central, and northeastern Louisiana that provide electric and natural gas service to customers in the greater Baton Rouge area.

The power supply contract with Entergy Louisiana follows the December 2015 final investment decision by Axiall and Lotte (OGJ Online, Dec. 18, 2015) to proceed with the $1.9-billion ethane-based cracker and associated $1.1-billion MEG plant, both of which will be built adjacent to Axiall’s Lake Charles chloralkali chemical facility to take advantage of existing infrastructure, access to competitive US shale feedstock resources, and ethylene distribution infrastructure (OGJ Online, June 18, 2015; Dec. 20, 2013).

With full construction previously scheduled to begin during this year’s second quarter, the grassroots cracker and MEG plant are due for startup in early 2019.

LACC earlier let a series of contracts to CB&I, Houston, for the project, including a $1.3-billion contract to provide engineering, procurement, fabrication, and construction for the ethane cracker, which will use CB&I’s proprietary SRT cracking heaters as well as its recovery section design.

CB&I also was engaged to deliver detailed engineering and early procurement services on the cracker after previously delivering front-end engineering and design and other early-stage engineering works for the project (OGJ Online, Sept. 3, 2015).

Lotte subsidiary Lotte Chemical Louisiana LLC also separately let contracts to CB&I to provide construction planning and reviews, early works services, and construction services for the proposed MEG unit, which once commissioned, will be the nation’s largest and provide the company 600,000 tpy of MEG for export to destinations in Europe and Asia (OGJ Online, Dec. 22, 2015; Oct. 30, 2015).

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].