Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) has held groundbreaking ceremonies for the new 1.5 m t/y ethane cracker to be built at its Cedar Bayou site near Baytown, Texas. The cracker will form the nucleus of the petrochemicals producer's $6 billion U.S. Gulf Coast (USGC) Petrochemicals Project scheduled to go on stream in 2017.

As part of the project, the company also will build two 500,000 t/y polyethylene plants - including a bimodal HDPE unit and a metallocene LLDPE unit - at its Sweeny site at Old Ocean, Texas. To feed the PE plants but also for retail purpose, ethylene output is being upgraded by 90,000 t/y.

At Cedar Bayou, CPChem is also building a plant for 1-hexene, which it claims will be the world's largest. Details are expected to be presented soon for an expansion of normal alpha olefins capacity at the same site.

The Cedar Bayou facility is the first of several crackers in planning, designed to take advantage of cheap shale-derived ethane feedstock. Other projects include a 1.5m t/y ethane cracker at Baytown planned by ExxonMobil and envisaged to start up in 2016. Dow Chemical plans to erect a 1.5 million ethane cracker at Freeport, Texas, by 2017.

A joint venture of Jacobs Engineering Group and Fluor has the EPC contract for the two PE facilities at Old Ocean.