Baytown ethane cracker launches
Chevron Phillips expansion unit begins working at Baytown plant
Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. on Monday announced the startup of its first new U.S. ethane cracker in decades, a major investment that will boost production at its Cedar Bayou complex in Baytown as the petrochemicals industry expands rapidly along the Gulf Coast.
Chevron Phillips, a joint venture of the oil company Chevron Corp. and Houston refiner Phillips 66, built the cracker to process ethane, a natural gas liquid, into ethylene, a building block of many types of plastics. At capacity, it will produce 1.5 million tons of ethylene a year to turn into pipes, films, containers and other plastic products.
The new supply of ethylene will support the production of polyethylene — the world’s most common plastic — at the company’s Old Ocean plant near Sweeny. There, it built two new polyethylene units that began operating in September with the combined capacity to produce 4.4 billion pounds of plastic resins a year.
The company expects that the cracker, eight years in the making, will increase its U.S. ethylene and polyethylene production capacity by 40 percent. President and CEO Mark Lashier said much of the new capacity will support the domestic market, through the company will continue to look for export opportunities.
“We’ll be able to compete anywhere in the world with these products,” he said.
The expansion comes amid a surge in Gulf Coast petrochemi-
cals production as manufacturers capitalize on a cheap and plentiful supply of natural gas flowing from West Texas. Other major companies, including LyondellBasell and Dow Chemical Co., are investing billions of dollars to expand their local plants.
A surge in global demand for plastics and other petrochemicals has bolstered the oil and gas industry even as governments worldwide look to reduce emissions and implement stricter fuel efficiency standards for vehicles.
The International Energy Agency, which tracks global energy markets, anticipates that petrochemicals will account for a quarter of the growth in global oil consumption during the next five years, replacing gasoline as the driver of crude oil demand.
Several other ethane crackers are expected to come online to meet that demand. The agency forecasts that new ethane crackers will increase consumption of oil and natural gas liquids by at least 1.4 million barrels a day through 2023.