$6 billion petrochemical plant opens in Freeport, Texas, $4 billion addition now planned

Fuel Fix:
The newly merged DowDuPont said Thursday it's opening its new ethylene and plastics plants in Freeport, making the nation's largest chemical giant the first to start up a major ethylene complex along the Texas Gulf Coast.

The complex is the crown jewel of the old Dow Chemical's recent $6 billion expansion along the Gulf Coast. The chemical company will go back to being just Dow once DowDuPont splinters out into three separate companies in a year or so.

The project includes a massive ethane cracker that separates a component of natural gas liquids called ethane, which in turn will provide the feedstock for some 1.5 million metric tons a year of ethylene, the most common building block of plastics. A large portion of an upcoming $4 billion expansion will go toward expanding the plant to 2 million metric tons a year, eventually making it the world's largest ethylene production plant.

DowDuPont Executive Chairman Andrew Liveris, who's also chairman and CEO of Dow, called Thursday's news a monumental moment for Dow's future.

"These facilities are an integral part of Dow's investments on the U.S. Gulf Coast to meet increasing consumer-led demand in our core market verticals of packaging, infrastructure and consumer care, and will enable our next level of earnings and cash flow growth," Liveris said in the announcement.

The ethane facility is near DowDuPont's new polyethylene plastics plant that will take the ethylene and start to churn out 400,000 metric tons of plastic resins a year to make various films and packaging materials for use throughout the world. Dow is building additional plastics facilities in Freeport and Louisiana.

The project adds to a petrochemical boom primarily along the Gulf Coast, where chemical and plastic makers can take advantage of cheap and ample natural gas, the feedstock for their products. The growing demand for plastics is mostly coming from Asia, primarily China.
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ExxonMobile and Chevron Phillips Chemical also have huge petrochemical plants under construction that will add even more capacity.  They are all taking advantage of the shale gas that has driven down the price.  These plants have generated a huge number of construction jobs and they will also boost employment for operations of the completed plants.

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