MOSCOW (MRC) -- Samsung Engineering, one of the world’s leading engineering, procurement, construction and project management companies, announced that it had signed a EUR1 bln contract with China National Chemical Engineering & Construction Corporation Seven (CC7), a Chinese state-owned construction company, for the engineering and procurement for the ethane cracker in gas to chemicals project in Russia, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Baltic Chemical Complex, the original owner of the contract, previously signed an EPC contract with CC7 in 2019. The project is located at the Gulf of Finland near the seaport of Ust-Luga, Leningrad Oblast, 110 km southwest of St. Petersburg, Russia.
Samsung Engineering’s work of scope includes an ethane cracker unit with a total design capacity of 2.8 MMtpy (ethylene 1.4 MMtpy, 2 Trains) and procurement for the project.
The ethane cracker unit is the core process element of the plant. The Baltic Ethane Cracker Project produces ethylene from separated C2 out of natural gas.
The ethane cracker in gas to chemicals project marks a major milestone for Samsung Engineering with its first project in Russia. Samsung Engineering entering the Russian market is achieving further diversification in their overseas markets.
As MRC reported before, in April, 2021, RusGazDobycha, a business partner of Russian gas giant Gazprom, started building a chemical plant as part of a massive gas processing cluster on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The cluster is designed to process annually 45 billion cubic metres of natural gas, produce 13 million tons of LNG, 3.6 million tons of ethane and up to 1.8 million tons of LPG. A first stage of the cluster is set to come on stream in 2024, while the second is to be launched in 2025.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,265,290 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2021, up by 14% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,363,850 tonnes in January-November, 2021, up by 25% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
MRC