Chevron Phillips Chemical breaks ground on new Texas ethane cracker

Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem) held a groundbreaking ceremony this week for its US Gulf Coast (USGC) petrochemicals project at the Cedar Bayou plant in Baytown, Texas. 

The groundbreaking ceremony signifies the start of construction for the USGC project, all sparked by shale resource development. 

The project includes a 1.5 million tpy (3.3 billion lb/year) ethane cracker to be built at the Cedar Bayou facility in Baytown, and two 500,000 tpy (1.1 billion lb/year) capacity polyethylene facilities to be built in Old Ocean, Texas.

The groundbreaking ceremony included local officials Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Jack Morman, Texas State Representative Wayne Smith and other elected representatives.

“First, we want to thank our local community neighbors and government officials for their support over the years as we embark on this exciting growth for our company, the petrochemical industry and our country,” said Peter L. Cella, CEO of Chevron Phillips Chemical. 

The project will support 400 long-term direct jobs and 10,000 engineering and construction jobs. The estimated completion date is in 2017.

“As we’ve carefully planned this project, we’ve leveraged our first mover advantage to attract the strongest workers from each of the contract companies working on the project and together we will be successful,” said Cella.

The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase of the ethane cracker project will be executed through a joint venture between JGC (USA), Inc. and Fluor Enterprises, while Gulf Coast Partners, a partnership between Technip and Zachry Industrial, will execute EPC for the two new polyethylene facilities. 

Chevron Phillips Chemical will host a groundbreaking for the polyethylene units on June 17.