LONDON�Statoil shipped out its first cargo of liquefied ethane from its recently expanded Kårstø plant, north of Stavanger on Aug. 30. Bound for Bamble, south of Oslo, the 2,600 tonne consignment was produced during testing at the plant's new ethane processing facility and is the first shipment of this commodity between two Norwegian industrial plants.
Plans call for the ethane, being separated from gas arriving at Kårstø by pipeline from fields such as Statoil's Norwegian Sea Åsgard development, to be loaded twice a week on to the Clipping Viking and Navion Dania for transport to Norsk Hydro's Bamble petrochemical facility and the Borealis plant at Stenungsund, Sweden, where the ethane will be cracked and polymerized into polyolefins, raw materials for plastic productions.
Borealis�owned 50% by Statoil, 25% by Austria's OMV, and 25% by Abu Dhabi's International Petroleum Investment Co.�also will be taking ethane at the Bamble petrochemical plant of Noretyl, a joint venture of Borealis and Norsk Hydro AS.
Once in full operation, the Kårstø plant will have an annual capacity of 620,000 tonnes.