Borealis AS will boost the capacity of its ethylene cracker in Porvoo, Finland, by 10% to 310,000 tonnes. The project should be completed in May 2002. The cracker will be debottlenecked by modifying the compressor and installing an ethylene splitter. Borealis expects the expansion will help reduce volatile organic compound emissions by 5%.
Middle East Oil Refinery SAE (Midor) has awarded Foster Wheeler Corp. subsidiary Foster Wheeler International Corp. a 5-year contract to operate and maintain its grassroots 100,000 b/d refinery under construction in Alexandria, Egypt. The contract is worth $260 million.
Atofina Petrochemicals Inc. has awarded Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. a contract to provide engineering and procurement services for the polystyrene expansion at Atofina's facility in Carville, La. Atofina is building a 230 kiloton/year high-impact polystyrene line that will increase capacity to 750 kiloton/year. The project should be complete by mid-2002.
The National Fertilizer Corp., the parent of Pakistan's state-owned fertilizer companies, suspended the managing director and four other senior officers of the Pak-American Fertilizer Factory after an explosion in the plant last month. The Oct. 17 blast damaged the reformer of an ammonia plant of the factory, located at Iskandarabad in Punjab province. The plant is shut in.
German company Fuchs Petrolub AG, a lubricant manufacturer, has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Alhamrani Group of Saudi Arabia and Naseer Brother Pvt. Ltd. of Pakistan to establish a lube oils plant at Port Qasim (about 30 km from Karachi), to be called Fuchs Oil Pakistan Ltd. The companies will invest $15 million in a first phase.
