BP Plans $830 MM Olefins Expansion At UK Facilities

16 November 1998 00:00  [Source: ICB Americas]

BP has confirmed plans for several chemical projects in the northeast UK requiring a total investment of £500 million ($830 million).

The company will build a 270,000-metric-ton-per-year expansion to its ethylene cracker in Grangemouth, Scotland, raising the site's ethylene capacity to more than 1 million tons. The expansion is due to start up in 2000, when new feedstocks from the Central Graben Area of the North Sea will become available.

A new 110,000-ton-per-year ethanol plant will also be constructed at Grangemouth. That unit is scheduled to be completed in 2001, when a 150,000-ton-per-year ethanol facility at Baglan Bay, south Wales, will be closed.

A 250,000-ton-per-year vinyl acetate monomer plant and a 220,000-ton-per-year ethyl acetate unit will be built together at Hull, England, to reduce costs.

The VAM plant, which will be based on a proprietary new BP technology able to double the capacity of a single reactor relative to conventional processes, will be completed in 2000. This coincides with the termination of a toll manufacturing arrangement with EniChem for VAM production at Porto Marghera, Italy. A 115,000-ton VAM unit at Baglan Bay will also be shut down.

The new ethyl acetate facility will replace an existing unit at Hull. It will be the first to commercially use a proprietary "direct addition" process for making ethyl acetate from ethylene and acetic acid without requiring ethanol.

BP also intends to build a 151-kilometer extension to Hull of the existing Grangemouth-Teesside ethylene pipeline. This will enable the facility to receive ethylene feedstock from both Grangemouth and Wilton, Teesside, where BP has a 20 percent stake in an 830,000-ton-per-year cracker.

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