Projects: news in brief

SHELL TO SELECT US CRACKER SITE THIS YEAR
Shell hopes to reach a decision by the end of the year on the site of its proposed ethane cracker complex in the northeast of the US, said Brian Davis, head of base chemicals. The cracker will tap into feedstock made available from Shell’s shale gas acreage in the Marcellus field, which extends through West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Anglo-Dutch group has narrowed its options down to a handful of sites. “The preference is to be close to where the liquids are,” said Davis. Shell’s Marcellus shale gas acreage covers dry and wet gas but the wet gas is in the southern part of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

ORIENTAL PLANS PDH AND PP INVESTMENTS
Oriental Petrochemicals Co (OPC) plans to build a 250,000 tonne/year propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit and raise its polypropylene (PP) capacity from 160,000 to 220,000 tonnes/year by the end of 2015, said Hesham Raafat, CEO of the Egyptian company. “The OPC is looking to be self-sufficient in [feedstock] propylene production,” he said. “Studies are underway to build a PDH unit of 250,000 tonnes/year to supply the PP plant.”

EASTMAN TO ADD PLASTICIZERS CAPACITY
Eastman Chemical plans to add 6,000 tonnes/year of capacity to its non-phthalate plasticizers plant in Kingsport, Tennessee, US. The announcement comes less than a month after the US-based specialty chemicals producer bought a plant in Texas to produce its non-phthalate plasticizer, Eastman 168, and less than a year after completing a debottlenecking process in Kingsport in February. The additional capacity is scheduled to be on line by the end of the year, Eastman said.