NPE: Betting on a polymers boom

Plastics will be plentiful in 2017 – polyethylene (PE) in particular. Multiple projects will increase US capacity at an unprecedented rate. With natural gas bountiful and ethane most abundant as a cracker feedstock, it is no surprise that PE will comprise the bulk of the downstream production.

Ethane-cracking yields ethylene and not much else, while naphtha-cracking produces ethylene, propylene and C4 for butadiene (BD), along with aromatics. Downstream from ethylene, petrochemical companies are placing their chips primarily on PE, as well as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production.

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Already there are plans to build 11 new ethane crackers in the US, for a total of 13.3m tonnes/year of ethylene capacity. Include another eight expansions of existing crackers to add 1.6m tonnes/year, and you have a whopping 14.9m tonnes/year of planned ethylene capacity, or 55% of the existing capacity base, according to an ICIS analysis.

Much of that capacity is set to start-up in 2017. These figures do not include plans by start-up companies such as Badlands NGL and Aither Chemicals to build new crackers. Among the 11 planned new crackers, five are already under construction – by Chevron Phillips Chemical, ExxonMobil Chemical, Dow Chemical, Formosa Plastics and Mexichem/Occidental Chemical.

Two others – from Sasol and Shell – have already secured permits and are awaiting final investment decisions from management.

And downstream from the planned crackers are a slew of planned new PE plants, along with standalone PE expansions.

HUGE SURGE OF CAPACITY

Altogether, there are 17 planned new PE units in the US, including multiple units at certain sites, for a total of 8.1m tonnes/year of capacity. This represents a 53% increase in the existing US capacity base, according to an ICIS analysis.

Not included in this analysis is the new ambitious PE project announced by start-up Badlands NGL. In October 2014, Badlands announced its intention to build 1.5m tonnes/year of PE capacity in North Dakota, US, to take advantage of ethane production in the state’s Bakken shale formation.

The $4bn (€3.2bn) project was announced by Badlands NGL along with North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple. “This project is fully aligned with our goals to reduce flaring, add value to our energy resources right here in North Dakota and create diverse job opportunities across the state,” Dalrymple said.

“This facility is the solution needed to add value to North Dakota’s ethane supply and make it a commercially marketable product,” Badlands CEO William Jeffery Gilliam added. “In doing so, there will actually be a market advantage for North Dakota PE products.”

To develop the PE project, Badlands will be working with strategic partners Tecnicas Reunidas, a Spain-based petrochemical design and technology company, and Vinmar, a US-based project development and marketing company.

Preliminary engineering work, which will include technology evaluations, engineering and planning and final site selection, is expected to be complete before the end of 2014. The facility is expected to take three years for full development.

In Canada, NOVA Chemicals is building a 460,000 tonne/year linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant in Joffre, Alberta, for start-up in the summer of 2016. It expects higher ethylene production from its existing crackers in Joffre from using off-gases from nearby oil sands production, along with US ethane piped in from North Dakota.

Lastly, in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico, the Braskem Idesa joint-venture cracker and PE project called Ethylene XXI is on track to start up in the second half of 2015. That will include a 1.05m tonne/year cracker with three downstream PE units – two units to produce a total of 750,000 tonnes/year of high density polyethylene (HDPE), and one unit with 300,000 tonnes/year of low density polyethylene (LDPE) capacity.

INCREASED IMPETUS

The state has been pushing producers to capture more natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) as the shale boom has outpaced the building of gas-capturing infrastructure in the Bakken shale play. North Dakota instituted minimum capture requirements, effective on 1 October.

PVC will be the other major polymer being produced downstream from the new crackers in the US. The 544,000 tonne/year Mexichem/OxyChem cracker being built in Ingleside, Texas, will feed the ethylene into vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) production at the site, which in turn will be shipped to Mexichem’s PVC plants in Mexico. That cracker is slated for start-up in the first quarter of 2017.

Two other PVC producers – Axiall and Shintech – are also building crackers, presumably for PVC feedstock. US-based Axiall plans to build a 1m tonne/year cracker with partner South Korea-based Lotte Chemical at a site in Louisiana by 2018.

And Japan-based PVC producer Shintech was the latest major company to announce a new cracker in April 2014. It is planning to build a 500,000 tonne/year cracker in Louisiana but has not specified a target date for ­start-up.

The coming boom in polymers capacity is part of a larger revival in the US chemical sector – all arising from shale gas. With a 50-60% cost advantage for US chemical producers versus those in western Europe and Asia, which mostly rely on naphtha feedstock, the US is undertaking 197 chemical projects based on the shale gas advantage, representing investment of around $125bn, according to Kevin Swift, chief economist of the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

The ACC ultimately forecasts $150bn in chemical projects with peak investment outlays in 2017.

And while plastics converters in the US are eagerly awaiting new capacity flooding the local market, a good slug of that capacity is targeted for export – to Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Swift estimates that 65-75% of the new capacity set to come on stream in the US Gulf Coast will be exported, largely in the form of plastic resin. US chemical producers are expected to gain global market share, at the expense of their European counterparts.

Already European PE producers are shutting down certain units permanently. In October, a Borealis source said the company’s 175,000 tonne/year HDPE plant in Burghausen, Germany, will not return to operation when the site comes back from maintenance in progress. The plant had been due for closure at the end of 2014.

The Borealis HDPE plant will be the latest in a line of PE closures in Europe, as producers cut production at older non-profitable plants in the face of competition from newer lower-cost units, mainly in the Middle East and increasingly in North America.

Coming up in planned closures are Total’s 70,000 tonne/year HDPE unit in Antwerp, Belgium, by the end of 2014, and Repsol’s 90,000 tonne/year HDPE plant in Puertollano, Spain, in 2015.

While the flood of US polymers capacity will displace some product in other countries, such a massive unprecedented expansion is likely to take down pricing in the local market, if past petrochemical cycles are to be repeated.

However, petrochemical and polymers prices in the US have been tracking Brent crude oil – not US natural gas prices, even as 80% of cracker feedstock is being derived from natural gas.

An ICIS analysis of the relationship since 2000 between US chemical prices (including polymers) as measured by the US ICIS Petrochemical Index (IPEX), Brent crude oil and Henry Hub natural gas, reveals that the US IPEX and Brent crude oil have an R2 (r-squared) of 86.4%. This is a significant degree of correlation.

In stark contrast, even as 80% of cracker feedstocks are based on natural gas, the R2 between the US IPEX and natural gas is just 1.9% – essentially there has been no correlation.

US petrochemical and polymers producers may take some comfort in that high prices can be sustained by high crude oil while production costs are based on ultra-low natural gas. But will that relationship hold with the massive wave of capacity by 2017?

• Additional reporting by Jessie Waldheim in Houston and Linda Naylor in London