This is a sampling of the projects planned for Louisiana and does not include all projects. If you would like your expansion information included in BIC Magazine, please send it to Editorial Director Kaye Benham at kaye@bicalliance.com.
Avalon Rare Metals Geismar
Avalon Rare Metals has selected a Geismar site for a rare earth elements separation plant and refinery. Construction of the $300 million plant will depend on a final investment decision by Avalon in 2013.
Anticipated completion: 2017
BASF Geismar
BASF broke ground in October 2012 on a world-scale production plant for formic acid at its Geismar manufacturing site.
Anticipated completion: 2014
Boise Inc.
Boise Inc. will invest $111 million to upgrade a major paper machine at Boise’s DeRidder Paper Mill. The reconfiguration of a former newsprint machine will allow the company to make lightweight linerboard and corrugated material, key components of packaging.
Anticipated completion: 2014
CF Industries Donaldsonville
CF Industries Holdings Inc. will expand the nation’s largest nitrogen plant, investing $2.1 billion in its Donaldsonville Nitrogen Complex. CF Industries will build new ammonia and urea/urea-ammonium nitrate production units.
Anticipated completion: 2016
Cheniere Energy Cameron Parish
Cheniere Energy has initiated a project to install liquefaction services at the Sabine Pass LNG receiving terminal in Cameron Parish to transform it into a bi-directional facility capable of liquefying and exporting natural gas in addition to importing and regasifying foreign-sourced LNG.
Anticipated completion: 2015 (first train operational)
Cool Planet Energy Systems
Cool Planet Energy Systems will build three biorefineries in Louisiana with a capital investment of $168 million. The project will consist of modular biomass-to-gasoline refineries in Alexandria, Natchitoches and a site to be determined.
Anticipated completion: 2014 (Alexandria), 2016 (Natchitoches) and 2016 (at a Louisiana site to be determined)
Dow Louisiana Operations Plaquemine
The Dow Chemical Company will improve ethane feedstock flexibility for an ethylene cracker in Plaquemine.
Anticipated completion: 2015
ExxonMobil Chemical Baton Rouge
Exxon Mobil Corp. will increase capacity of its synthetic esters and alkylated naphthalene at its chemical plant in
Baton Rouge.
Anticipated completion: 2014
ExxonMobil Lubricants Port Allen
Exxon Mobil Corp. is building a state-of-the-art blending center for synthetic aviation oil at its lubricant blending plant in Port Allen for blending, packaging and storing of the aforementioned increased product from the chemical plant.
Anticipated completion: 2014
Genesis Energy
Genesis Energy will make a $125 million investment to improve the company’s existing assets and develop new infrastructure in the Baton Rouge area. The company will modernize and expand its terminal in Port Hudson, construct an 18-mile, 20-inch diameter crude oil pipeline connecting to ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge Refinery and build a new crude oil unit train facility.
Anticipated completion: 2014
G2X Energy
G2X Energy Inc. plans to build a $1.3 billion natural gas-to-gasoline facility at the Port of Lake Charles in Southwest Louisiana. The facility will use natural gas to produce methanol, which will then be converted to gasoline.
Anticipated completion: 2017
Honeywell
Honeywell will invest $208 million in new manufacturing projects at its four production sites in Louisiana. Specifically, the projects will be at Honeywell Performance Materials and Technologies facilities that include fluorine products production operations in Baton Rouge and Geismar; a catalyst production facility in Shreveport; and an adsorbent production facility in Baton Rouge for the UOP business unit of Performance Materials and Technologies.
Anticipated completion: Each of the initial Honeywell projects will be under way by the fourth quarter of 2013.
Huntsman
Huntsman Corp. will invest $78 million in its Geismar chemical facility. Huntsman’s investment will yield a 50-kiloton increase in the facility’s output of methylene diphenyl isocyanate. The investment will also fund extensive modernization of the facility’s operations.
Anticipated completion: 2014
Incitec Pivot/Dyno Nobel/Cornerstone Chemical
Dyno Nobel and Cornerstone Chemical will invest a combined $1.025 billion for a new ammonia production facility and related upgrades in Waggaman. The new Dyno Nobel plant will produce 800,000 metric tons of ammonia per year at Cornerstone Chemical’s Fortier Manufacturing Complex on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish.
Anticipated completion: 2016
Juniper GTL
Juniper GTL will invest $100 million to renovate a dormant steam methane reformer in the Westlake area and convert it to a natural gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility, producing clean waxes, drilling fluids, diesel and naptha. The Juniper GTL project, with a design production of 1,100 bpd of clean chemicals and transportation fuels, will be a forerunner of smaller commercial GTL plants.
Anticipated completion: 2015
Katoen Natie USA
Katoen Natie USA will invest $150 million to build a plastics storage, custom packaging and distribution facility for producers of petrochemical products in Baton Rouge.
Anticipated completion: 2018
Magnolia LNG
Magnolia LNG will build a $2.2 billion project to develop a natural gas liquefaction production and export facility at the Port of Lake Charles. The facility will be capable of producing 4 million metric tons of LNG annually.
Anticipated completion: Commercial operations to begin in 2018.
Methanex Corp.
Methanex Corp. will relocate two 1 million ton methanol plants from its Chile site to Geismar.
Anticipated completion: 2014
Sasol Lake Charles
Sasol will build an integrated 96,000 bpd gas-to-liquids facility and a world-scale ethane cracker with downstream derivatives at its Lake Charles site in southwest Louisiana. Current project costs are an estimated $11 billion-$14 billion for the facility and $5 billion-$7 billion for the cracker.
Anticipated completion: 2017 (cracker) and 2018 and 2019 (facility in two phases)
Sempra Energy
Sempra Energy, Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. signed 20-year tolling capacity and joint venture agreements to support the development, financing and construction of an LNG export facility at the site of the Cameron LNG receipt terminal in Hackberry.
Anticipated completion: Construction is expected to start in 2014 with the first phase of liquefaction operations to commence in the second half of 2017. Full commercial operation of all three trains is expected in 2018.
Shell
Shell plans to install a small-scale liquefaction unit at its Shell Geismar Chemicals facility.
Anticipated completion: 2016
Shintech
Shintech is planning a $500 million expansion at plants in Louisiana to increase production of polyvinyl chloride and other products. Shintech manufactures polyvinyl chloride at its plants in Plaquemine and Addis.
Anticipated completion: 2015
South Louisiana Methanol
South Louisiana Methanol LP will invest $1.3 billion in a new methanol production facility on the banks of the Mississippi River in St. James Parish. The plant will convert 163,000 Btu per day of natural gas to 5,000 metric tons per day of methanol.
Anticipated completion: 2016
Sundrop Fuels Alexandria
Sundrop Fuels will build its first production facility, which will cost $450 million-$500 million, in Alexandria. The plant will use sustainable forest waste combined with hydrogen from clean-burning natural gas to produce up to 50 million gallons annually of renewable “green gasoline.”
Anticipated completion: 2014
Valero Energy Corp.
Valero is looking at a $700 million expansion at its Norco refinery and is considering building a methanol unit at the St. Charles Parish plant. Once completed, the plant will produce about 1.6 million tons of methanol per year.
Anticipated completion: 2016
Williams Partners LP
Williams Partners LP is executing, through its subsidiary Williams Olefins LLC, a plan for restarting its Geismar Olefins plant and bringing on line an expansion that will increase its share of the plant’s ethylene production capacity by approximately 50 percent.
Anticipated completion: 2014
Wolverine Terminals LLC
Wolverine Terminals LLC will make a $30 million capital investment to establish a crude oil terminal and blending operation on a 15-acre Mississippi River site in
St. James Parish. With five storage and blending tanks, Wolverine will provide a total capacity of 425,000 barrels of crude oil at its St. James Parish facility.
Anticipated completion: 2014
EuroChem
EuroChem intends to build an ammonia and urea production plant in Louisiana to manufacture and distribute fertilizer products in the United States and other markets. EuroChem expects to finalize its decision on the parameters and location of the facility within the next year.
The Mosaic Co.
Mosaic is beginning front-end engineering and design work on a potential $700 million ammonia production plant at the company’s existing Faustina site in St. James Parish.