Major US engineering and construction group Fluor has won a contract to provide engineering and procurement services for LyondellBasell’s proposed propylene oxide (PO) and tertiary butyl alcohol (TBA) plant. The facility will be built at LyondellBasell’s Channelview and Bayport complexes in Texas, USA.

Construction is anticipated to start in the second half of 2018 and, when completed in 2021, the plant will have annual capacities of 1 billion pounds (454,000 t/y) for PO and 2.2 billion pounds (907,000 t/y) for TBA. At the peak of construction, up to 2,500 jobs are expected to be created with approximately 160 permanent positions when the plant goes into operation.

The contract follows a previous award made to Fluor in February 2016 for the project’s front-end engineering and design.

Mark Fields, president of Fluor’s energy & chemicals business in the Americas, said that Fluor had developed a solution that optimized plant design, leveraged global procurement opportunities and implemented a cost-effective modularization approach.  “Our integrated solutions approach substantially reduced the facility’s capital costs and helped LyondellBasell achieve their final investment decision on this world-scale chemical facility,” he said.

The project is estimated to cost $2.4 billion, representing the single-largest capital investment in LyondellBasell’s history.

LyondellBasell is also evaluating new PP capacity to support demand in the US, as well as a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit to provide propylene feedstock. Decisions on both projects are expected next year.

US investment bank Jefferies said it expects LyondellBasell to evaluate another PE unit in 2018-2019.