Italian contractor Maire Tecnimont will lead a consortium to build ExxonMobil’s $2 billion expansion at Baytown, Texas, USA. ExxonMobil announced on May 2 that it had given the final investment decision on the project, which will include a plant for 400,000 t/y of its Vistamaxx family of propylene-based elastomers as well as a 350,000 t/y linear alpha olefins (LAO) facility.

The Rome-headquartered engineering group announced last year that ExxonMobil had granted its Tecnimont USA  subsidiary, in a consortium with US group Performance Contractors, a reimbursable contract for the front end engineering design, early execution studies and early procurement activities for the process units along with associated offsites and utilities.

“With this important project milestone our industrial footprint in North America is further expanded, best positioning our group to seize new opportunities coming from the availability of cheap shale gas as feedstock for refining and petrochemical projects,” said Maire Tecnimont’s CEO, Pierroberto Folgiero.

The expansion is scheduled to go on stream in 2022.

Separately, Tecnimont’s licensing arm Stamicarbon has won a contract from Shchekinoazot to provide a license, the process design package and proprietary equipment for a grassroots 2,000 t/d urea melt and granulation plant to be built in Pervomayskiy, Tula, Russia.

The urea melt unit will use Stamicarbon’s Pool Reactor and Flash designs, which are said to simplify synthesis loop operation, while reducing both investment costs and reduce steam consumption.

The granulation plant will use Stamicarbon’s Optimized Granulation design and its high-performance multi-stage MicroMist Venturi gas scrubber technology, which is designed to remove urea particles and ammonia gas at extremely high efficiencies.

Last month, Haldor Topsoe announced that it would supply technology for the 1,500 t/d ammonia project at the site.