Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem) has offered to buy Canada’s Nova Chemicals for more than $15 billion including debt, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters news agency.

The acquisition would give CPChem added scale and an expanded footprint. Nova has seven manufacturing sites across Canada and USA. It also has several projects underway at the moment, including a 430,000 t/y LLDPE plant in Sarnia, Ontario, which is due to start up at the end of 2021.

In addition, its Bayport Polymers venture is building an ethane cracker in Port Arthur, Texas, USA. Bayport Polymers is 50% owned by Total Petrochemicals & Refining USA and 50% by Novealis, itself a joint venture between Nova and Borealis.

The $1.7 billion cracker will have a capacity of 1 million t/y, feeding an existing HDPE plant and a new 625,000 t/y HDPE plant being built at the site. The cracker is due to start up in 2020, with the PE plant to follow in 2021.

In April 2017, Nova agreed to pay $2.1 billion to acquire Williams’ 88.46% stake in the olefins plant at Geismar, Louisiana, USA, as well as undeveloped land adjacent to the facility and Williams’ interest in the ethylene trading hub in Mont Belvieu, Texas.

Earlier this year, the Calgary-based group said it was continuing to evaluate building a PE plant at Geismar, making use of the plant’s ethylene output, which is currently sold on the merchant market.

Nova is owned by Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala. Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Co. (IPIC) bought Nova in 2009 for $500 million, a move designed to rescue the Canadian group from its large debt. In January 2017, the Abu Dhabi government merged IPIC and Mubadala to form Mubadala Investment Co.  Mubadala also owns a 64% share in major polyolefins producer Borealis.

CPChem is a joint venture between US energy and chemical companies Chevron Corp. and Phillips 66. It operates 34 sites worldwide – 25 in the US, one in Colombia, two in Qatar, two in Saudi Arabia, one in Singapore and three in Belgium.