IN PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY, A SECOND WAVE OF GROWTH BROUGHT BY SHALE
Less well known is that those expansions have continued. When combined with the $17.5 billion likely to be invested in 17 brand-new petrochemical facilities this year in Canada and the United States, 2018 could see the greatest number of petrochemical projects of any year since 2010, according to Texas-based Industrial Info Resources, Inc.
“The time for speculating which plants will be built or not is coming to a close, because we’re finally seeing the plants being completed,” said Kathy Hall, the executive editor and founder of PetroChem Wire, a trade publication that charts growth in the industry.
Two of the most recently completed projects are Chevron Phillips Chemical’s new ethane cracker in Baytown, which was built on a plot of land the size of 44 football fields, and two new polyethylene (PE) units south of Houston in Old Ocean, Texas. These units convert ethylene like that produced in Baytown into polyethylene, or resin pellets, that are the building blocks for a variety of plastics. The $6 billion investment was years in the making. It represented a shift in the company’s investments from the Middle East back to the United States due to the shale boom. The cracker and PE units were the first investments of this type built in the United States by Chevron Phillips in decades.
“This represents a 40 percent increase in our U.S. capacity to make ethylene and polyethylene, so that’s a huge ramp up for a company that goes back to the 1960s when we first built crackers, either as Chevron or Phillips,” said Ron Corn, senior vice president of petrochemicals for Chevron Phillips Chemical, in a recent interview.
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