MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chevron Phillips Chemical announced today plans to expand its propylene business with a final investment decision for a new C3 splitter unit, said the company.
The unit’s location will be in Baytown, Texas, within the company’s Cedar Bayou facility. Its expected capacity is 1 billion lbs./year with targeted start up in 2023. The company chose S&B Engineers and Constructors to engineer, procure and build the project. Site construction activities will commence in January 2022. At its peak, the project anticipates supporting 350-plus new construction jobs.
The C3 splitter will convert a refinery grade mixture of propylene and propane into a high purity propylene product. Propylene is essential to the production of key building blocks for many household and industrial applications, including polypropylene, propylene oxide and acrylonitrile. These chemicals are also used in the production of plastics for several packaging applications and durable consumer products. Polypropylene is also central to the manufacturing of plastic parts for various industries including the automotive sector.
"With global propylene demand on the rise, this project reinforces Chevron Phillips Chemical’s commitment to expand to meet our customers’ needs and remain a leading propylene supplier," said Justine Smith, senior vice president of petrochemicals.
Chevron Phillips Chemical currently operates C3 splitter units at its Cedar Bayou, Port Arthur and Sweeny, Clemens and Old Ocean facilities in Texas. The new unit will provide additional flexibility and production to meet anticipated demand from the company’s growing customer base, while establishing room for future growth.
As MRC informed previously, in March 2018, Chevron Phillips Chemical, part of Chevron Corp, successfully introduced feedstock and commenced operations of a new ethane cracker at its Cedar Bayou facility in Baytown, Texas. At peak production, the unit will produce 1.5 million metric tons/3.3 billion lbs. per year. This unit is one of the largest and most energy efficient crackers in the world. In September 2017, the company announced the successful commissioning and start-up of two new Marlex polyethylene (PE) units in Old Ocean, Texas, based on the company’s proprietary MarTech technologies. Together, these assets form the bulk of the company’s US Gulf Coast Petrochemicals Project (USGCPP), which was first announced in 2011.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,047,100 tonnes in the first ten months of 2021, up by 17% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,226,530 tonnes in January-October 2021, up by 26% year on year. Supply of propylene homopolymers (homopolymer PP) and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding stat-copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) decreased significantly.
Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Chevron Corporation is the the second-largest integrated energy company in the United States and among the largest corporations in the world. Chevron is involved in upstream activities including exploration and production, downstream activities including refining, marketing and transportation, and advanced energy technology. Chevron is also invested in power generation and gasification processes.
MRC