JGC and Fluor to build Baytown USGC Ethane cracker
Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP (ChevronPhillips) made the final investment decision (FID) to build its Cedar Bayou US Gulf Coast Petrochemical (USGC) project in Baytown, Texas, USA.
In following this decision ChevronPhillips selected the 50/50 joint venture of JGC Corporation from Japan and Fluor Enterprises Inc. from USA for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract of the ethane cracker package of the project.
Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP is a wholly owned company of Chevron Phillips Chemical LLC, a 50/50 joint venture between Chevron Corporation (Chevron) and Phillips 66.
In the race to take the best advantage of the competitive shale gas resources in USA, ChevronPhillips had been among the pioneers to announce in March 2011 its intention to expand its existing site in Cedar Bayou with an ethane cracker as a feeder of its US Gulf Coast Petrochemical project.
With 1.5 million tonnes per year (t/y) capacity, USGC will be the largest ethylene plant in the world.
Including the ethane cracker, ChevronPhillips has budgeted the design and execution of the USGC Petrochemical project to $5 billion capital expenditure.
In 2012 The Shaw Group performed the front end engineering and design (FEED) of the project.
Meanwhile the FEED execution, The Shaw Group entity, ex Stone & Webster, in charge of the project has been taken over and integrated by Technip from France.
Therefore ChevronPhillips USGC ethane cracker will use a Technip license.
For the EPC contract JGC and Fluor established a 50/50 joint venture where:
- JGC will have the leading role for the engineering and procurement of the process units
- Fluor will handle the engineering and procurement of the offsites and utilities
Technip and Zachry won USGC Polyethylene Plants
As part of the US Gulf Coast Petrochemical complex, ChevronPhillips awarded two large polyethylene facilities to the partnership Gulf Coast Partners made of Technip from France and Zachry Industrial Inc. (Zachry) from Texas, USA.
With a capacity of 500,000 t/y of polyethylene per unit, these plants should be located in Old Ocean, close to the existing ChevronPhillips Sweeny facilities.
For these production units, ChevronPhillips will use its proprietary Advanced Dual Loop bimodal technology in order to maximize the flexibility of the production along a large bandwidth of polymers.
In order to cover all the types of demands of the domestic market, ChevronPhillips is planning to produce:
- Bimodal polyethylene polymers
- High Density polyethylene
- Linear Low Density polyethylene
- Metallocene-based polymers
While Technip will provide ChevronPhillips with its Stone & Webster proprietary furnaces and process equipment, Zachry will share it 15 years experience in engineeering and services on the existing facilities of the Sweeny site.
On the Baytown ethane cracker awarded to JGC - Fluor, as well as in the Old Ocean Polyethylene plants allocated to Technip -Zachry, ChevronPhillips expect to start the execution work on early 2014 for first production to start in 2017.
