GETTING IT DONE
Chevron Phillips Chemical’s expansion in Baytown is closer to completion.
The dozen or so cranes visible from Interstate 10 in Baytown will only remain for a few more months as Chevron Phillips Chemical’s $6 billion petrochemical expansion moves toward completion.
Chevron Phillips’ complex is more than 80 percent complete, although it won’t be fully operational for almost another year. The project involves a massive ethane cracker — on a plot the size of 44 football fields — that will separate a component of natural gas called ethane, which will provide the feedstock for some1.5 million metric tons a year of ethylene, a common building block of plastics.
Chevron Phillips, a joint venture of Chevron and Phillips 66 of Houston, also is building two new polyethylene plastics units southwest of Houston in Old Ocean by Phillips 66’s Sweeny complex. The plants will make that ethylene and turn it into plastic resin that’s shipped both domestically and internationally.
The project adds to a petrochemical boom primarily along the Gulf Coast, where chemical and plastic makers can take advantage of cheap and ample natural gas, the feedstock for their products. The American Chemistry Council, an industry trade group, estimates that more than 250 petrochemical projects are under construc- tion or planned across the country through 2023, at a combined cost of $160 billion. About $50 billion of that investment is in Texas.
The growing demand for plastics is mostly coming from Asia, primarily China, but also India and Indonesia, where rising incomes are fueling appetites for consumer goods, said Ron Corn, a Chevron Phillips senior vice president.
“They’re basically entering the consumer class,” Corn said, and demanding products like single-serve shampoo packets.
There’s alot of competition from other ethane crackers popping up throughout Texas and Louisiana, but Corn said he’s convinced global plastics demand is growing quickly enough to consume the new supplies.
The Houston area project is the biggest project to date for The Woodlands-based Chevron Phillips. Additional expansion could follow, Corn said, although the goal is to finish this project first. There were some minor delays caused by weather and additional retraining needed for some craft workers.
There was also one fatality in May when a contractor with the Irving construction company Fluor died after an on-site accident. A joint venture between Japan-based JG C and Flu or is building the cracker.
The project has created 10,000 temporary construction jobs and 400 permanent positions once it’s completed.
Twenty-one-year-old Pete Rodriguez is one of those employees working as a polyethylene unit operator. A Mont Belvieu native, he was admittedly clueless about his future when he was about to graduate from high school.
A job fair drew his attention to Chevron Phillips, which awarded him a scholarship at Lee College in Baytown. Now he’s on track to make close to $100,000 a year and just bought a home in Mount Belvieu.
Chevron Phillips said it has worked to be a good neighbor, buying up additional acreage to serve as a buffer between the plant and the Bay town community.
Chevron Phillips also built what is called a low-profile flare to release fewer emissions more discreetly — as opposed to the typical tall flare that looks a ball of fire in the sky. With a low-profile flare, only a glow can be seen from nearby communities.
“They’re basically entering the consumer class.” Ron Corn, a Chevron Phillips senior vice president, commenting on rising Asian incomes