At CERAWeek, Canada’s Trudeau extols the virtues of Texas job market.
Wrapping up work ahead of competing projects is a bonus
In Business
Dow Chemical Co.’s multibilliondollar expansion in Freeport is nearing completion, with the ethylene plant coming online midyear — getting a head start on competing projects from Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. in Baytown.
“We’ll be one of the first out of the gate, so we feel pretty good about that,” said Doug May, Dow’s business president over chemicals and aromatics.
Dow’s nearly completed plant, called an ethane cracker, will process ethane, a natural gas liquid, into 1.5 million tons per year of ethylene, the primary building block of most plastics. The 1.5 million tons is nearly triple the capacity of the Occidental Petroleum Corp. ethane cracker that just started production in Ingleside.
The Exxon Mobil and Chevron Phillips projects will have the same production capacity as the Dow project, but probably won’t commence production until late 2017, or perhaps early next year.
Dow CEO Andrew Liveris promised more Dow expansions in Texas.
“We ain’t done yet, as Texans say,” said Liveris, speaking Friday at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston. “We’ve got more to invest.”
The ethane cracker is the largest piece of Dow’s more than $6 billion expansion along the Gulf Coast, mostly in Freeport and Lake Jackson, which also will increase the company’s capacity to
manufacture polyethylene, propylene and other plastics. Most of the production is targeted for export markets, especially China.
The Freeport complex south of Houston is Dow’s largest. The Michigan company designed and built Lake Jackson 73 years ago to house workers when it chose rural Freeport as an operations site. Dow employs more than 6,000 people in the greater Houston area, mostly in Freeport and Lake Jackson.
The ethane cracker is expected to come online about the same time Dow completes its $130 billion merger with DuPont. But Liveris and May emphasized that Dow’s Texas operations will see little effect from the merger. After the merger, DowDuPont will be splintered into three separate companies, including one named Dow that would continue to own and run the Freeport complex.
The materials science business would operate under the Dow name, the agribusiness under DuPont and specialty products under a yet-to-bedetermined brand.
Liveris said he hopes the petrochemical manufacturing boom will help lead a larger American manufacturing renaissance under President Donald Trump. The president recently chose Liveris to lead his Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. That’s in part because Liveris is retiring later this year after the merger is completed. DuPont CEO Ed Breen will be the CEO of the merged DowDuPont.
Liveris said he favors fair and open global trade, but added that resistance to globalization is understandable, given the disruptions it can cause to businesses and their workers. He said he supports a globalization “pause” to recalibrate and ensure that global growth doesn’t come at the expense of American workers.
“It’s so important to not leave a substantial part of humanity behind,” he said.