Lotte Chemical lets contract for Malaysian cracker revamp

Dec. 2, 2014
Malaysiaian olefins producer Lotte Chemical Titan (M) Sdn. Bhd., a subsidiary of South Korea’s Lotte Chemical Corp., has let a contract to KBR Inc. the revamp of an existing steam cracker plant at its 300-acre integrated petrochemical complex located across five sites in Pasir Gudang and Tanjung Langsat in Johor, Malaysia.

Malaysiaian olefins producer Lotte Chemical Titan (M) Sdn. Bhd., a subsidiary of South Korea’s Lotte Chemical Corp., has let a contract to KBR Inc. the revamp of an existing steam cracker plant at its 300-acre integrated petrochemical complex located across five sites in Pasir Gudang and Tanjung Langsat in Johor, Malaysia.

In addition to basic engineering design services for the project, KBR also will provide licensing for its proprietary catalytic olefins technology, which converts olefinic, paraffinic, or mixed streams into propylene and ethylene, KBR said.

The project is intended to increase the plant’s olefins production capacity as well as help to diversify its feedstock slate, KBR said.

The value of the contract was not disclosed.

Lotte Chemical Titan’s production site in Malaysia consists of eleven production plants, two cogeneration plants, and three tank farms connected by a system of underground pipelines, shared utilities, and controls that enable the sites to operate as a single integrated petrochemicals complex, according to the company’s web site.

The Malaysian complex hosts two naphtha steam crackers with a combined ethylene production capacity of about 720,000 tonnes/year, said parent company Lotte Chemical.

In its latest earnings presentation, Lotte Chemical had yet to determine the investment cost for the planned expansion of its Malaysian steam cracking operations, which is scheduled for mechanical completion in 2017.

The expansion project would increase the complex’s production capacities for ethylene by 92,000 tpy, for propylene by 170,000 tpy, and for BTX by 134,000 tpy, Lotte Chemical said.