MOSCOW (MRC) -- PTTGC America's final investment decision on a new petrochemical complex in southeast Ohio remains on indefinite hold until the company secures a new partner in the project, reported S&P Global with reference to the company's email Aug. 25.
"PTTGCA is currently focused on securing a partner for the project," the email said. "Once there is a partner in place, the company will be in a position to reach FID."
In July 2020, the company announced it had struck a deal with Energy Storage Ventures to develop a USD250 million natural gas liquids storage and transportation facility for the proposed complex. The facility would be the first underground NGL storage site in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations.
Shortly before PTTGCA announced the storage deal, the company said that its former partner in the petrochemical complex, South Korea's Daelim, had withdrawn from the project. Daelim had signed on to the project in February 2018, and the companies had planned a final investment decision, or FID, by the end of that year. More recently, the company had aimed FID by early 2020, but COVID-19 related delays pushed that to early 2021 and then without a new target date until a partner is secured.
According to permitting documents, PTTGC's project includes a 1.5 million mt/year cracker, two 350,000 mt/year high density polyethylene (HDPE) plants, a 450,000 mt/year HDPE plant and a 450,000 mt/year linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant.
As MRC informed earlier, in February 2021, PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC; Bangkok, Thailand) awarded Samsung Engineering a USD127-MM EPC contract to modify the Map Ta Phut olefins complex in Thailand. Samsung"s scope is to increase the throughput of propane for the production of propylene by building propane-propylene split and distillation towers and modify the current facilities. The project is scheduled to be completed by 2023.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,176,860 tonnes in the first half of 2021, up by 5% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 727,160 tonnes in the first six months of 2021, up by 31% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased. Supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.
PTT Global Chemical is a leading player in the petrochemical industry and owns several petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 8.45 million tonnes a year.
MRC