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Chexpress - December 10, 2013
11 December 2013
North America
Sale
Carlyle Group LP is preparing an initial public offering or sale of PQ Corp that could value the specialty chemical company at up to $3 billion, including debt. The private equity firm, which bought PQ for $1.5 billion in 2007, plans to talk to investment banks to choose underwriters for the proposed offering. Carlyle will also explore a sale of PQ to another firm.
Contract won
CB&I has been awarded a contract valued at approximately $1 billion by Ingleside Ethylene LLC, a joint venture between Occidental Chemical Corporation (OxyChem) and Mexichem S.A.B. de C.V., for the engineering, procurement and construction of an ethane cracker and associated utilities and offsites to be located at OxyChem’s complex in Ingleside, Texas. The cracker will have the capacity to produce approximately 1.2 billion pounds/year of ethylene from a feedstock that is anticipated to be ethane derived from domestic shale gas. CB&I had previously provided the technology license and basic engineering for the ethylene technology, five short residence time (SRT) cracking heaters and the front end engineering and design (FEED) services.
Sale
Dow Chemical Co. will sell a bulk of its chlorine operations – its oldest business – as part of its plan to sell or spin off commodity chemicals assets worth up to $4 billion. Company representatives say this will allow the company to prioritize its capital on higher margin, more consistent earnings growth businesses. Other assets identified for sale by Dow Chemical include the company’s epoxy business and some brine and energy assets, representing a total of $5 billion in revenue.
Methanol plant
OCI N.V.’s wholly owned subsidiary Natgasoline LLC plans to build a new greenfield world scale methanol plant in Beaumont, Texas. The plant is expected to have a capacity of up to 5,000 metric tons/day, or 1.75 million metric tons/year. Production is expected to start in late 2016.
World
Petrochemical plant
Grupa Lotos and Grupa Azoty have announced plans to build a $3.87 billion petrochemical plant by 2020 to reduce Poland’s reliance on imports. The plant will be built in Gdansk with help from state investment vehicle PIR, though most of the cost will have to be funded by debt and possibly a foreign partner. Financing is to be put together in 2015 after the groups complete a detailed feasibility study.
Expansion
Ineos is building a new furnace at its petrochemical plant in Rafnes, Norway as it expands capacity to use ethane made from U.S. shale gas it will store in a gas tank under construction at the site. The company is building an ethane storage tank that will enable the plant to produce 570,000 tons/year of ethylene. The extra furnace will enable it to produce 620,000 tons/year. The Norwegian plant currently houses 11 furnaces that process ethane gas and some oil-based liquids into ethylene. By the end of 2015, the company will have built a twelfth at the site. The total investment Ineos will make is around $160 million.
Liquid cracker
General Electric Co. and Carbon Holdings have signed a $500 million agreement to provide support in the building of the world’s largest liquid cracker at a petrochemicals complex on the Gulf of Suez. The naptha cracker project is part of the Tahrir Petrochemicals Complex worth $4.8 billion. The construction of the cracker is said to begin sometime in 2014 and construction is expected to take approximately 50 months. The new plant will have an annual capacity of 1,360,000 tons of ethylene and polyethylene as well as significant quantities of propylene, benzene, butadiene and linear alpha olefins.
