HPIN CONSTRUCTION HELEN MECHE, ASSOCIATE EDITOR HM@HydrocarbonProcessing.com
North America Foster Wheeler’s Global Engineering and Construction Group has signed a strategic umbrella agreement with The Dow Chemical Co. to provide project management, consulting, engineering, procurement, and construction management and construction services. This agreement has an initial term of three years. It provides support by Foster Wheeler to selected Dow global capital projects, forming part of its growth strategy across its diversified portfolio of businesses: specialty chemicals, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics. CB&I has been awarded a contract, valued at about $300 million, by Williams Olefins, LLC, for a petrochemicals expansion project in Geismar, Louisiana. The award includes the license and basic engineering for the ethylene technology; supply of the cracking furnaces; and detailed engineering, procurement and construction of the expansion project. Plant capacity is expected to be increased from 1.35 billion lb/yr to 1.95 billion lb/yr. KBR will design and construct an ethylene furnace for INEOS Olefins and Polymers US. Upon commissioning, the furnace will reportedly provide the highest achievable ethylene yields in the industry. Agreements include provision of a technology license, engineering, procurement, supply of equipment and materials, and furnace construction. The design will add a furnace production capacity of 465 million lb/yr to the INEOS Chocolate Bayou Works Olefins Complex in Alvin, Texas. This furnace will use KBR’s high-performance Selective Cracking and Optimum Recovery (SCORE) ethylene technology and process natural gas liquid (NGL) feedstocks. The furnace will also include KBR’s latest generation Ultra-Low NOx burner technology and a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) bed to reduce nitrous-oxide emissions. Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. LP will build the world’s largest on-purpose 1-hexene plant, capable of producing up to 250,000 metric tpy, at its Cedar Bayou Chemical Complex in Baytown, Texas.
Construction is targeted to commence in the first half of 2012, and the project is anticipated to start up during the first quarter of 2014. The company has executed agreements with S & B Engineers and Constructors, Ltd., to engineer and build the plant utilizing Chevron Phillips Chemical’s proprietary, second-generation, on-purpose 1-hexene technology, which produces comonomer-grade 1-hexene from ethylene with exceptional product purity. UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, will invest $20 million to expand its production facility in Mobile, Alabama, to produce adsorbents and catalysts. The investment will expand production of Honeywell’s UOP IONSIV Ion Exchange adsorbents, which remove radioactive material from liquid, and are being used in Japan in response to last year’s nuclear disaster. It will also support the production of new adsorbents and catalysts used by petrochemical producers and refiners. The expansion is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2012. The Mobile, Alabama, plant also produces Honeywell UOP ADS-47 Parex adsorbent. This latest generation of the company’s Parex adsorbent is said to increase yields of paraxylene by more than 20% over previous technology. CB&I has been awarded a contract, valued in excess of $55 million, by Trans Mountain Pipeline ULC, operated by a subsidiary of a Canadian subsidiary of Kinder Morgan. The scope of the contract includes the design, fabrication and construction of storage tanks and associated works for the Trans Mountain Pipeline ULC’s terminal located in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada. The project is scheduled for completion in 2013. The Dow Chemical Co. will construct a new world-scale ethylene production plant at Dow Texas Operations in Freeport, Texas, as part of Dow’s previously announced comprehensive plan to further connect its US operations with cost-advantaged feedstocks available from increasing supplies of US shale gas.
The new ethylene production facility at Dow Texas Operations will employ up to 2,000 workers at its construction peak. Over the next five to seven years, Dow estimates that this project, together with all other planned projects announced as part of the company’s comprehensive US investment plan, will employ up to 4,800 workers during peak construction and support over 35,000 jobs in the broader US economy. The project is on track for start up in 2017, and Dow continues to develop feedstock supply arrangements for this new asset. Dow’s board of directors has authorized capital to finalize detailed engineering and purchase long lead-time equipment for a new, world-scale propylene production facility to be constructed at Dow Texas Operations. Basic engineering work for the new on-purpose propylene production facility at Dow Texas Operations has commenced, and the project is on track for production start up in 2015.
Europe Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has a contract from Afipsky Refinery, located in the Krasnodarskij Region of Russia, to develop a basic-engineering package for an amine regenerator unit, a sour-water stripper and an expected 55-tpd sulfur recovery unit (SRU). All three units are part of a refinery extension project that includes a hydrotreater unit and a visbreaker unit.
Trend analysis forecasting Hydrocarbon Processing maintains an extensive database of historical HPI project information. The Boxscore Database is a 35-year compilation of projects by type, operating company, licensor, engineering/constructor, location, etc. Many companies use the historical data for trending or sales forecasting. The historical information is available in comma-delimited or Excel® and can be custom sorted to suit your needs. The cost depends on the size and complexity of the sort requested. You can focus on a narrow request, such as the history of a particular type of project, or you can obtain the entire 35-year Boxscore database or portions thereof. Simply send a clear description of the data needed and receive a prompt cost quotation. Contact: Lee Nichols P.O. Box 2608, Houston, Texas 77252-2608 713-525-4626 • Lee.Nichols@GulfPub.com HYDROCARBON PROCESSING JUNE 2012
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