Plant Manager Wayne McDowell and his team at Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP's Sweeny/Old Ocean Facilities had a banner safety year in 2016 and have additional milestones to celebrate this year with an expansion starting up.
Located 50 miles southwest of Houston, Chevron Phillips Chemical's Sweeny Facility -- in operation since 1944 -- is one of the world's largest single-site ethylene facilities, capable of producing more than 11 million pounds of ethylene per day. In addition to ethylene, natural gas liquids (NGL) and propylene operations, there are also salt dome storage operations at the Clemens Terminal, located 12 miles south of the facility.
The nearby Old Ocean Facility will manufacture high- and low-density polyethylene and linear low-density polyethylene upon start-up.
McDowell has managed the Sweeny Facility since September 2008. He began his career in 1981 with Warren Petroleum, the Gas Liquid Division of Gulf Oil, and managed maintenance, operations and process safety management. Prior to the formation of the Chevron Phillips Chemical joint venture in 2000, McDowell was a process engineering supervisor with Chevron Overseas Petroleum, and later repatriated and accepted a superintendent role at Chevron Chemical. For the past 35 years, he has worked in various engineering, operating and technical managerial roles, including serving as plant manager at Chevron Phillips Chemical's Orange, Texas, facility.
With his experience, McDowell is leading his site and his team to safety accolades and growth.
A major shift
"In the next few years, the polyethylene industry will be experiencing a major shift as new capacity is brought on line along the U.S. Gulf Coast," said McDowell.
According to IHS Markit, 60 percent of the polyethylene capacity currently under construction in the U.S. will be exported, increasing overall exports by 40 percent.
"The increased exports from the U.S. will have a positive economic impact on associated businesses that handle product distribution, packaging, freight forwarding and export facilities," said McDowell. "In fact, Chevron Phillips Chemical is adding trans-loading and packaging facilities in various locations around the U.S. in order to ensure our global customer base is efficiently and effectively served from our manufacturing facilities.
"These same facilities will not only help us better serve customers outside of the U.S., but they will also help us better serve our domestic customers by rail or by truck. Recently, we've made $500 million in rail-related investments, adding roughly 3,000 railcars to our fleet to ensure no bottlenecks in moving polyethylene out of Old Ocean."
In mid-2017, two polyethylene units in Old Ocean are expected to start-up. Located west of the Sweeny/Old Ocean Administration Building, the new units are each capable of producing 500,000 metric tons -- or a combined 2.2 billion pounds -- of plastic resin annually. The Old Ocean Rail Operations Facility supports the new polyethylene units with full and empty railcar storage and staging, railcar maintenance and other transportation functions. At a length of 5 miles, it has the capacity to store more than 1,500 railcars. A new Chevron Phillips Old Ocean Warehouse will serve the ethylene, NGL and polyethylene units to provide bagging and tagging of daily maintenance, project material , and storage of critical spares, consumables and tools.
The company's polyethylene units, part of its U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) Petrochemicals Project, alone will fill about 11,000 railcars each year with polyethylene to be transported to transloading and packaging facilities, where the product will go into bags or smaller containers to be shipped all over the world.
"In short, we are going to be extremely well positioned to safely deliver product to our customers via innumerable routes and transportation modes, because at the end of the day, our logistical system must work to optimize and minimize total cost to serve our customers," explained McDowell.
The growth carries many benefits, including job creation.
"Over the past several years, our primary focus has been on workforce development," said McDowell. "In fact, during our USGC Petrochemicals Project construction process, we employed 10,000 engineers and construction workers and hired 400 new employees to run and maintain the new facilities and serve customers.
"And the jobs don't stop there! According to an estimate by the American Chemistry Council, for every new job in the chemical industry, six jobs are generated outside of the industry. In addition, the average salary for employees at Chevron Phillips Chemical is nearly $100,000, which is approximately 50-percent higher than the average for other manufacturing jobs in the U.S."
The 'best year ever'
In 2016, Chevron Phillips Chemical achieved best-ever performance in multiple operational excellence metrics, including the combined employee and contractor recordable injury rate (RIR), process safety event rate and environmental reportable rate. Meanwhile, the Sweeny Facility had its best year ever, with a 40-percent reduction over the past three-year average RIR. Also in 2016, the Sweeny Facility achieved Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) Star status. With this designation, all of Chevron Phillips Chemical's U.S. manufacturing facilities boast VPP Star status.
In 2016, Chevron Phillips Chemical launched its "Our Journey to Zero" Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) strategy. It is a blueprint to achieve what is already a clear objective for Chevron Phillips Chemical: eliminating high-potential consequence incidents.
"'Our Journey to Zero'" builds on the many successful initiatives already embedded in the safety culture, including the Life Saving Rules, Tenets of Operations and Our Guiding Principles," said McDowell.
Strengthening connections
To be a good neighbor to the community, the Sweeny/Old Ocean team focuses on more than just safe performance and operational excellence.
"At Chevron Phillips Chemical, we recognize that strengthening connections with our neighbors in our local communities provides for a lasting relationship built on trust and goodwill," explained McDowell. "Through our involvement as a company and the efforts of our workforce, we donate funds, time and resources to worthy causes from health, arts and social services to enhancing science education in schools."
Most recently, the Sweeny and Old Ocean Facilities collaborated with the surrounding school districts and community colleges to provide scholarships and contributions for buildings and equipment directly related to STEM courses.
"One unique asset in the community is the Petrochemical Academy," said McDowell. "Funded by Chevron Phillips Chemical and Phillips 66, the Petrochemical Academy provides dual-credit classes for students who are interested in process technology, instrumentation, millwright, pipefitting, welding and electrical careers."
The Petrochemical Academy is a relationship between the industry and independent school districts in an effort to close the gap in skilled talent needed to construct, maintain, operate and support the regional manufacturing growth.
With the good news of its expansion and the growth of the industry, the Sweeny/Old Ocean Facilities are sure to put that new talent to work well into the future.
"It is an exciting time for the company and the industry," McDowell said.
