Canada Kuwait Petrochemical advances Alberta PP complex

Dec. 11, 2017
Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corp. (CKPC), a joint venture of Pembina Pipeline Corp., Calgary, and Petrochemical Industries Co. KSC (PIC) of Kuwait, has let a contract to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., Dallas, to provide front-end engineering design services for a proposed 1.2 billion-lb/year grassroots, integrated propane dehydrogenation and polypropylene (PP) complex in Sturgeon County, Alta.

Robert Brelsford

Downstream Technology Editor

Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corp. (CKPC), a joint venture of Pembina Pipeline Corp., Calgary, and Petrochemical Industries Co. KSC (PIC) of Kuwait, has let a contract to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., Dallas, to provide front-end engineering design services for a proposed 1.2 billion-lb/year grassroots, integrated propane dehydrogenation and polypropylene (PP) complex in Sturgeon County, Alta.

Jacob will execute FEED work from its offices in Calgary, Houston, and Charleston, W.Va., with a large portion of the project scope to be carried out in Canada, the service company said.

While it did not disclose a value of the FEED contract, Jacobs said it expects the project to mobilize immediately.

This latest contract for CKPC's planned complex follows the JV's previous contract award for the project to Honeywell UOP LLC to license its proprietary C3 Oleflex technology for production of 550,000 tonnes/year of polymer-grade propylene based on a feedstock of 22,000 b/d Alberta-produced propane from Pembina's Redwater fractionation complex and other regional facilities (OGJ Online, July 11, 2017).

First announced in May, the proposed PP complex has a preliminary price tag of $3.8-4.2 billion (OGJ Online, May 16, 2017).

The JV partners previously said they will take final investment decision on the development following completion of FEED, which is due by late 2018.

PIC's petrochemical plans

Alongside CKPC's planned complex, PIC also plans to implement an aromatics complex in Bahrain that would include a 1.4 million tpy paraxylene production unit, according to a Nov. 29 release from the Kuwaiti government.

Alongside undertaking an economic and technical feasibility study for a fourth olefins project in Kuwait, PIC also is evaluating possible investments in other petrochemical projects in the US and South Korea, according to Waleed Al-Bader, PIC's deputy chief executive for olefins and aromatics.

Al-Bader also said PIC expects to complete a US petrochemical complex designed to produce 750,000 tpy of ethylene glycol by yearend 2019.