Ineos has received permission from the provincial government of Antwerp, Belgium, to clear a 48-hectare forest in preparation for construction of a €3 billion propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant in the city’s port. Operation of the complex, which is to include an ethane cracker, has not yet been approved.

The cracker is to be fed by shale gas-derived ethane imported from the US via a pipeline from the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania before being loaded on special tankers the Swiss-based group had custom-built to import feedstock to its ethane crackers at Grangemouth, Scotland, and Rafnes, Norway.

Belgian news reports said a local activist group, Antwerp Shale Free – one of a reported 20 local and international groups that have filed objections to the Ineos complex – intends to appeal the province’s decision.

Along with Antwerp Shale Free, Greenpeace Belgium was also among the petitioners against Project One, Ineos’ name for the project. “With today’s climate emergency, Europe urgently needs to move toward full decarbonization by 2040,” the NGO group said. “Pumping billions into a plastics factory that will emit millions of tons of CO2 over the coming decades really is the last thing the climate needs.”

Responding to the objections, Ineos has told petitioners and the provincial environment authority that the planned installations will be the “most energy efficient in Europe,” emitting “substantially less” CO2 than comparative facilities currently.

The chemical producer said the cracker will use hydrogen released during the production of ethylene as a feedstock and that all the site’s facilities will be “carbon capture ready” when a breakthrough in the technology is achieved. Ineos is a partner in the Antwerp @C project, which is studying the feasibility of carbon capture in the port.

Ineos will compensate the province for the trees lost in the construction of what it is touting as the largest investment made in the European chemical industry in more than 20 years. The group estimates that the site will employ 450 people when all facilities are up and running.

The next hurdle for the olefins and polyolefin giants will be to secure a permit for the complex, which is expected to require four to five years to build. Downstream of the cracker and PDH unit, it will have capacity to produce 750,000 t/y of polypropylene.