Commentary: The next US project wave could be PP plants

While new US cracker projects will likely stall, the next series of announcements could come on the polypropylene (PP) side.

Braskem is evaluating the construction of a PP plant in the US, along with debottlenecking at its five existing US PP sites.

“There are talks of new PP plants in the US and we are evaluating that possibility. We see this happening in the near future,” said Musa. “However, everything depends on the availability of propylene feedstock. We need to secure the feedstock at the right location and at the right price.”

Braskem has US PP production at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania (350,000 tonnes/year); Kenova, West Virginia (240,000 tonnes/year); La Porte, Texas (330,000 tonnes/year) Freeport, Texas (320,000 tonnes/year) and Seadrift, Texas (225,000 tonnes/year).

On-purpose propylene production, through propane dehydrogenation (PDH), will be a major factor in increasing “much needed” availability from 2015 to 2017, he noted.

Ideally the new PP plant being evaluated would be world-scale at around 450,000-500,000 tonnes/year, but could be considerably smaller, all depending on propylene availability, said Musa.