Dubai-based MEGlobal International FZE, a subsidiary of Kuwait’s first international petrochemical joint venture Equate Petrochemical Co., said it will build its first US monoethylene glycol (MEG) manufacturing plant at Dow Chemical Co.’s Oyster Creek petrochemical complex in Freeport, Tex.
The grassroots MEG plant, which will receive ethylene feedstock from Dow’s currently expanding Oyster Creek ethylene production site under a long-term supply agreement (OGJ Online, June 26, 2014; Oct. 29, 2012), is scheduled to be commissioned in mid-2019, MEGlobal said.
The plant comes as part of MEGlobal’s program to create greater flexibility to satisfy grown demand for ethylene glycol products in the US and Asia Pacific markets, as well as strategy to expand the company’s global footprint, said Mohammad Husain, Equate Petrochemical’s president and chief executive officer.
Equate Petrochemical is an international JV of Kuwait’s state-owned Petrochemical Industries Co., 42.5%; Dow, 42.5%; Boubyan Petrochemical Co., 9%; and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Co., 6%.
Oyster Creek update
As part of the already completed long-term supply agreement between MEGlobal and Dow, ethylene supplies for the MEG plant will come directly from Dow’s 1.5 million-tonne/year Oyster Creek ethylene cracker, on which construction continues to progress, Dow said.
To date, the cracker is more than 40% completed and remains on track for startup in second-quarter 2017, said Dow, which also said it plans to complete ethane feedstock flexibility for an ethylene cracker at its operations in Louisiana by this year’s second half.
Separately, Dow confirmed it has undertaken a planned outage to repair an exchanger at its newly commissioned 750,000-tpy propane dehydrogenation unit (PDH) at the Oyster Creek site (OGJ Online, Mar. 9, 2016).
The company did not disclose further details regarding the nature of repairs or a timeline for the PDH unit’s restart.
Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].