Dow Chemical remains on pace for a mid-2017 startup of its world-scale steam cracker in Texas, potentially bringing the new capacity online ahead of competitors on the US Gulf Coast coming on stream, the company said Thursday during an earnings call.
Commissioning of the Light Hydrocarbons Unit No. 9 in Freeport, Texas is currently 50% complete, and is expected be be wrapped up during the second quarter of 2017, Dow said. The 1.5 million mt/year ethane-fed cracker is expected to start mid-year, along with two polyethylene units, Dow CEO Andrew Liveris said.
Sources have pegged the start for sometime during the third quarter.
Fluor Corp., which provided engineering, procurement and construction services on the cracker, said March 30 that mechanical construction had been completed.
The cracker is the cornerstone of Dow's $6 billion investment in the US Gulf Coast.
It will feed Dow's downstream projects, which include 400,000 mt/year of additional Elite polyethylene capacity, 350,000 mt/year of low-density PE, 200,000 mt/year of Nordel metallocene ethylene propylene diene monomer, and 320,000 mt/year of polyolefin elastomers, plus 125,000 mt/year of bimodal PE.
Dow said the LDPE and Elite capacity were expected to start up along with the cracker. The other capacity is expected to come online in early 2018. Dow also is planning to debottleneck an unspecified gas-phase PE unit in 2018, Liveris said.
