Corrected: Europe's €150m ethylene pipeline hit by delays

27 March 2008 14:50  [Source: ICIS news]

Correction: In the ICIS news story headlined “Europe’s €150m ethylene pipeline hit by delays” dated 27 March 2008, please read in the seventh paragraph … more than a €10m hit … instead of …a €2m hit …. A corrected story follows.

NEW YORK (ICIS news)--The completion of Europe’s Ethylene Pipeline Sud (EPS) is likely to be delayed by 9-12 months as companies have yet to acquire all the property rights needed, said an official at Germany’s Wacker Chemie on Thursday.

Construction of the €150m ($231m) 360km ethylene pipeline by seven chemical companies, which would improve feedstock supplies in Germany’s Bavaria, started up in September 2007 and was expected to be completed by September 2008.

“We have acquired about 80% of the property rights we need in Bavaria and about 50% in Baden-Wuertttemberg,” said Christof Bachmair, head of the press department at Wacker Chemie.

“We are currently in the process of obtaining the remaining passage rights with landowners, but this will result in a delay of nine to 12 months from September 2008,” he added.

EPS' stakeholders are BASF, Wacker Chemie, Clariant, OMV, Basell, Borealis, Vinnolit and the state of Bavaria, which holds a 30% stake in the project.

Wacker said it was investing about €10m in the pipeline project.

Wacker’s polymers division suffered more than a  €10m hit to operating profits in the fourth quarter of 2007 as a major ethylene supplier to its Burghausen, Germany, facility had a force majeure, shutting down production for longer than planned.

“Such a bottleneck could have been avoided with this pipeline,” said Wacker Chemie president and CEO Peter-Alexander Wacker at the company’s recent annual press conference. “We would not be dependent on just one supplier.”

The €150m pipeline - running from Munchsmunster in Bavaria to the Ludwigshafen petrochemicals hub in Rhineland Palatine - would link sites in Bavaria with Europe’s northwestern ethylene network.

By: Joseph Chang
+1 713 525 2653

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