AFPM ’19: INEOS looking to build another world scale bi-modal HDPE plant on the US Gulf Coast

Nigel Davis

24-Mar-2019

SAN ANTONIO (ICIS)–INEOS is looking at further expansion of its high density polyethylene (HDPE) production capability in the US and the possibility of constructing another worldscale unit on the Gulf Coast, CEO of  the company’s Olefins & Polymers USA business, Michael Nagle said on Sunday.

The plant would be “world scale” and follow the successful start-up at the end of 2017 of a 470,000 tonne a year bi-modal plant in a 50:50 joint venture with South Africa’s Sasol.

“We are very satisfied with that plant’s performance,” Nagle told ICIS on the sidelines of of this year’s AFPM International Petrochemical Conference (IPC).

“We are starting to look at further expansion in PE.” The company largely serve the domestic US market with bi modal HDPE.

INEOS is debottlenecking its ethylene capability on the Gulf Coast with expansion at Chocolate Bayou. It is adding a further 15%, or 275,000 tonnes of capacity, to the mixed feed cracker to take the total to about 2.1m tonnes/year.

In PP INEOS has already added a further 45,000 tonnes to its US capacity and is looking at a 45,000 to 68,000 tonne/year debottleneck in the next 24 months.

The company is a merchant buyer of propylene.

Additional investment at Chocloate Bayou will see a 90 meagawatt co-generation power plant come on-line in a short while.

INEOS has 1.2m tonnes/year of HDPE capacity on the US Gulf Coast and 750,000 to 775,000 tonnes/year of PP capacity.

Nagle said the company would be roughly balanced in ethylene as a group in the US once the Chocolate Bayou expansion is complete. “We would prefer to be roughly balanced to long,” he said.

INEOS feeds the cracker from its own fractionation capacity in West Texas and, more local to the cracker, salt dome ethane and products storage. It has more than 500 miles of pipelines serving is Gulf Coast facilities.

Hosted by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), the IPC takes place on 24-26 March in San Antonio, Texas.

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