Citing increased demand in Asia, Shell has started up a new 140,000 t/y high-purity ethylene oxide (HPEO) purification plant and a new 140,000 t/y ethoxylates unit at its site on Singapore’s Jurong Island, thereby doubling supply to local and regional customers.

The multinational oil and petrochemicals group delivers HPEO through an ethylene oxide pipeline grid to “over-the-fence” customers and its own expanded ethoxylation operations on Jurong Island. Feedstock comes from the group’s ethylene oxide/mono-ethylene glycol plant, which is integrated with its ethylene cracker and refinery on Pulau Bukom.

Shell said Singapore continues to be an important refining and petrochemicals hub, with the new Jurong Island plants further deepening its chemicals footprint in Asia. The availability of both ethylene oxide and propylene oxide (PO) at the same location offers an advantageous value proposition for specialty chemical companies, who commonly use both of these intermediates to produce value-added products, it added.

As part of the same process, Shell increased polyols capacity by more than 100,000 t/y in 2013 and added new grades. In December 2014, it took 100% control of Ellba Eastern, the styrene monomer and propylene oxide joint venture with BASF, a move it said enabled integration with and optimization of Shell’s existing assets on Jurong Island in a difficult cost environment.

Most recently, Shell debottlenecked its Singapore Pulau Bukom cracker and increased the capacity of olefins and aromatics by more than 20% to over 1 million t/y.