Sasol commissions new units at Louisiana petrochemical complex

Sasol Ltd. has started up the fifth and sixth of seven new production units at its Lake Charles Chemicals Project (LCCP), an integrated ethane cracker and downstream derivatives complex under progressive commissioning since 2019 in Westlake, La., near Lake Charles (OGJ Online, Dec. 17, 2019).

The LCCP’s 30,000-tonnes/year Guerbet alcohols unit—equipped with Sasol’s proprietary technology—reached beneficial operations (BO) on June 19 following the operator’s achievement of BO for the complex’s new Ziegler alcohols unit—which, also based on proprietary Sasol technology, adds 173,000 tpy of alcohol and 32,000 tpy of alumina production capacities also—on June 16, Sasol said.

With commissioning of the Guerbet and Ziegler alcohol units now completed, 100% of LCCP´s specialty chemicals units are now online and 86% of the complex’s total nameplate capacity now operational, the company said.

The last remaining unit to come online at LCCP will be the low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plant, which was damaged during a fire in January 2020. This is on track for beneficial operation by the end of September, as per previous guidance. At the end of May, the LCCP capital expenditure was tracking the previously communicated guidance of $12.8 billion.

Startup of the new units follows commissioning of LCCP’s 100,000-tonnes/year ethoxylates (ETO) unit in January and the 1.5 million-tpy ethane cracker, linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) unit, and combined ethylene oxide-ethylene glycol unit in 2019 (OGJ Online, Jan. 30, 2020; Aug. 30, 2019; June 3, 2019; Feb. 14, 2019).

Sasol said it expects to reach BO at LCCP’s low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plant—the complex’s seventh and final unit damaged during a mid-January 2020 fire—by the end of September 2020 (OGJ Online, Jan. 14, 2020).

At the end of May 2020, total LCCP capital expenditure amounted to $12.8 billion, according to the operator.