Sibur, Russia's largest petrochemical producer, is several months ahead of schedule with its $9.5 billion ZapSibNeftekhim project in Tobolsk, Siberia, company sources said.
As a result, the site -- Russia's largest petrochemical construction project -- was due to be completed by the end of 2019 instead of 2020 with delivery of the first chemical products in 2020 following several months of testing for each new unit, one source said.
As of now, no pre-marketing on the production coming from the expanded capacity has taken place.
There are 13,000 workers on the site, set to rise to 18,000 by next year at the height of the construction.
The ZapSibNeftekhim project includes the building of a new cracker with a 1.5 million tons ethylene capacity along with expansion of its current polypropylene and polyethylene capacity.
After the completion of the project, Sibur's total polymer capacity will rise to 2.6 million mt per year, from 1.1 million mt.
According to the company sources, the overall completion of the project stands at 28%. Specifically, the company's new polyethylene unit is 24% complete, while its increased PP capacity is estimated at 10-11% complete.
Around 40% of materials needed for the construction have arrived on site and the remainder will arrive this summer.
According to company sources, the company has a three-week window in the summer to bring in a large parts of materials needed to for the construction, as the can only be brought to the site on rivers that flow into the Arctic Sea.
Sibur's Tobolsk-Neftekhim petrochemical facility draws de-ethanized associated gases from northern Siberia by pipeline from the Purovsky Gas Condensate Processing Plant.
The gas is fractionated into the primary LPG feedstocks, which feed the steam crackers and subsequent downstream units.
