Combine formed to execute Gulf Coast Growth Ventures project

July 26, 2019
Taiwan’s CTCI has formed a joint venture with McDermott International to carry out work on a portion of the recently approved SABIC-ExxonMobil Gulf Coast Growth Ventures project, a 1.8 million-tpy ethane cracking complex in San Patricio County, Tex.

Taiwan’s CTCI Corp. has formed a joint venture with McDermott International Inc. to carry out work on a portion of the recently approved Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC)-ExxonMobil Corp. Gulf Coast Growth Ventures (GCGV) project, a 1.8 million-tonne/year ethane cracking complex in San Patricio County, Tex., near Corpus Christi (OGJ Online, July 25, 2016).

To be known as CTCI McDermott Integrated (CMI), the JV will provide CTCI’s modularization technology for construction of GCGV’s monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant that, once completed in 2022, will produce 1.1 million tpy of MEG, CTCI said.

The formation of CMI JV follows the earlier SABIC-ExxonMobil contract award to a consortium of McDermott and Turner Industries Group LLC to provide and engineering, procurement, and construction services for portions of the GCGV project (OGJ Online, June 26, 2019).

CTCI said this will be the first project to fully employ its modularization technology in the US EPC market.

Further details regarding the scope of CMI’s work on the project were not disclosed.

In June, the ExxonMobil-SABIC JV received final environmental regulatory approval to proceed with construction of the GCGV project, which—alongside the ethane steam cracker and MEG unit—also will include two polyethylene units (OGJ Online, June 13, 2019).

Project approval follows ExxonMobil and SABIC’s 2018 formation of the 50-50 GCGV JV—under which ExxonMobil will act as site operator—and the April 2017 selection of the San Patricio County site, which will allow ExxonMobil and SABIC to take advantage of the region’s existing infrastructure to capture competitive pricing for US natural gas feedstock as well as access to rising demand for ethylene-based products in overseas export markets.

Alongside forming part of SABIC’s growth strategy to build petrochemical installations in key markets—including the Americas—to address industry demand and achieve the company’s 2025 strategy, the proposed multibillion GCGV project also is one of the developments included as part of ExxonMobil’s 10-year, $20-billion Growing the Gulf expansion initiative announced in early 2017.

Contact Robert Brelsford at [email protected].