Chevron Phillips Chemical nears completion of US Gulf Coast petchem project
Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LP (CPCC), a joint venture of Chevron Corp. and Phillips 66, has completed construction of a 1.5 million-tonne/year ethane cracker at the combine’s Cedar Bayou facility in Baytown, Tex., as part of the second phase of its previously announced $6-billion US Gulf Coast petrochemical project (OGJ Online, Apr. 8. 2014).
Following construction delays in the wake of flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, CPCC has now reached mechanical completion of the cracker and started a series of rigorous commissioning activities, system checks, and final certifications to ensure the unit’s safe and reliable startup as well as consistent, on-spec production, CPCC said.
With preliminary commissioning activities now under way, the operator expects the cracker to remain on schedule for achieving full production rates sometime during second-quarter 2018, CPCC told OGJ via e-mail.
Once fully operational, the unit will produce at least 1.5 million tpy of ethylene to support CPCC’s ethylene business and as feedstock for the operator’s recently completed two 500,000-tpy polyethylene (PE) units at Old Ocean, Tex. (OGJ Online, Sept. 20, 2017).
Phased megaproject
End of construction at the Cedar Bayou cracker follows CPCC’s completion of Phase 1 of the USGC petrochemical project in early November with the start of commercial operations at Old Ocean’s two new PE units.
Based on CPCC’s proprietary MarTech process technology, the PE units are equipped to produce a combined 1 million tpy of various high-quality Marlex PE resins, including metallocene linear low-density PE and bimodal resins for film and pipe products (OGJ Online, June 20, 2017).
Ethylene feedstock for the PE units will be transported to Old Ocean from the Baytown plant via CPCC’s ethylene pipeline and storage system that was also expanded as part of USGC project, including construction of a storage-in-transition rail facility as well as purchase of nearly 3,000 rail cars to ship PE pellets to customers in North America and US marine terminals for export worldwide.
First announced in March 2011, the USGC petrochemical project comes as part of CPCC’s strategy to help meet robust global demand for ethylene and ethylene derivatives by taking advantage of abundant shale gas feedstock produced from ongoing development of US shale resources (OGJ Online, Mar. 29. 2011).
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].
