One of Asia's largest chemicals and plastics producers, Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics, is seeking to cash in on the U.S. shale gas boom with its own $2 billion ethane cracker in Texas.

On a trip to Washington, D.C. as part of a Taiwanese business delegation, Formosa vice chairman Susan Wang said the company has already asked federal and state authorities for permission to expand its site at Port Comfort, Texas southwest of Houston and expects the green light within a year.

"Because of shale gas, the cost of making petrochemical- and plastic-related products is becoming very competitive here in the United States," Wang said in an interview with Bloomberg News, adding that "it's probably as cost effective as in the Middle East."

In 2012, Formosa announced that it would spend $1.7 billion on an integrated 800,000 t/y gas-fed cracker and a 300,000 t/y LDPE plant at Port Comfort, along with a 600,000 t/y dehydrogenation (PDH) plant to start up in 2016. Wang did not elaborate on what the additional $300,000 expenditure would cover.

The executive told Bloomberg that her company is "at a crossroads" in determining whether to build or invest in a naphtha cracker in the Chinese People's Republic after Taiwan last month lifted its ban on such investments.

Separately, press reports from Vietnam and Taiwan say that Formosa is planning to build a 200,000 t/y production facility for polystyrene in Vietnam's Nhon Trach industrial park, where it already produces manmade fibers, polyester and biaxially oriented polypropylene film (BOPP).