16 May 2016
DETAILS
Today, INEOS Oligomers confirmed it had made
a Final Investment Decision (FID)
to build a new world scale Linear Alpha Olefin (LAO) unit
at the INEOS site at Chocolate Bayou, TX.
The LAO unit capacity will be
420 thousand metric tons per annum (ktpa),
20% larger than when the project was originally announced.
The new unit represents a major step forward
in the ambitious growth plans for the LAO business,
complementing existing units in
* Joffre, Alberta, Canada and
* Feluy, Belgium respectively.
Once the unit comes on-stream in November, 2018
the global LAO production capacity of INEOS Oligomers
will reach approximately
one million metric tons per annum.
Bob Learman,
INEOS Oligomers CEO
“We are now firmly in the implementation phase
of our long term growth strategy
for this key business”
“We continue to enjoy the support of
our INEOS Group Chairman Jim Ratcliffe,
who views these investment plans
as a key component of the company’s vision
for growth in North America.
The scale of this new capacity addition
underlines our commitment
to keep pace with our customers’ expanding need
for these products.”
Joe Walton,
INEOS Oligomers Business Director
“The new unit will be based on
our own proprietary and differentiated
INEOS Oligomers “broad-based” LAO technology.
Therefore, the plant’s product distribution
and product specifications will be
very familiar to our customers. In addition,
the unit will also include
process technology improvements that will also
reduce our variable costs”
“We continue to believe our market and
technology focus, combined with our access to
USGC ethylene economics,
make this a very attractive opportunity. Hence,
our ultimate decision to build a unit larger than
the 350 ktpa originally envisioned and
fully exploit available economies of scale”
“We continue to see strong, above GDP, growth
for LAO in the key markets we serve:
* Polyethylene (PE) comonomers,
* Polyalphaolefin (PAO) lubricants and
* drilling fluids.
Our new unit will be well placed
to supply the significant new PE capacity
being built on the Gulf Coast
over the next several years.
In addition, the unit will also provide the feedstock
that will enable our long term PAO capacity growth
to support the demand for
high performance synthetic lubricants. For example,
our new high viscosity PAO unit
will come on-stream in 1Q2017 and engineering
has begun on a new world scale low viscosity PAO train.
Furthermore, our LAO drilling fluids
can be readily exported to offshore fields
in the Gulf Coast, Caribbean and Latin America”
Media contacts
Jan Vermeersch,
Kevin Ratliff,
WWW.CHEMWINFO.COM BY KHUN PHICHAI
