Netherlands-headquartered, Texas, USA-managed petrochemicals and plastics producer LyondellBasell has completed its 50% expansion of ethylene capacity at Corpus Christi, Texas, USA,  to 1.13 million t/y from 770,000 t/y. The commissioning of the new capacity concludes a multi-year plan launched in 2012 to lift overall US ethylene production by more than 900,000 t/y. Output capability has been beefed up at plants in Clinton, Illinois, Marion, Iowa, and Channelview, La Porte and Matagorda, Texas, to the tune of altogether $2 billion.

"As we look to meet growing, global demand for our products, we continue to seek the right opportunities that ensure we are well positioned for the longer term," said CEO Bob Patel. "By expanding ethylene capacity in the US through debottlenecks rather than long and costly greenfield developments, we quickly added substantial capacity for significantly less than the cost of a new plant."

The company has also announced plans to invest another $3 billion in the Gulf region. New projects include a new HDPE plant in La Porte, Texas, which will be the first to use its new Hyperzone technology. Construction on the facility planned to go on stream in 2019 is scheduled to start in the near future. LyondellBasell also plans to build a world-scale propylene oxide/tertiary butyl alcohol (PO/TBA) plant at Channelview.