Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP (Chevron Phillips Chemical) announced today that its world-scale ethane cracker at Cedar Bayou in Baytown, Texas successfully achieved the major milestone of mechanical completion. The unit is now undergoing a series of rigorous commissioning activities, system checks and final certifications to ensure a safe and reliable start-up, and consistent, on-spec production. Once operational, the unit is expected to produce at least 1.5 million metric tons of product annually. At peak construction, approximately 5,000 workers were employed on this project, helping to spawn additional economic activity across the region.
“With the mechanical completion of Cedar Bayou’s ethane cracker, we are now on the cusp of completing the most transformative project in our company’s history, our U.S. Gulf Coast petrochemical project,” said Mark Lashier, president and chief executive officer of Chevron Phillips Chemical.
“I want to thank our employees, contractors, and the community of Baytown for helping make this milestone possible.”
The new ethane cracker will produce valuable product for the company’s ethylene business and feedstock for its ethylene derivatives businesses. The polyethylene (PE) fleet now includes the two new PE units at Old Ocean, Texas, which were also part of the U.S. Gulf Coast petrochemical project (USGC PP). These units started up in September 2017 and play a critical role in Chevron Phillips Chemical’s strategic expansion to meet the growing global demand for PE. These units can produce a wide variety of high quality Marlex® polyethylene resins ranging from metallocene LLDPE film to bi-modal film and pipe products, displaying the wide capability of Chevron Phillips Chemical Company’s proprietary MarTech® technology.
In addition to the cracker and PE units, the company has purchased nearly 3,000 newly built rail cars and constructed a state-of-the-art storage-in-transition facility to ship polyethylene via rail to customers both domestically and to ports for export around the globe.
