MOSCOW (MRC) - Fluor Corp secured the front-end engineering and design work for a chemicals plant in Louisiana being built by South Africa's Sasol Ltd aimed at putting cheap U.S. natural gas liquids to use, said Reuters.
Fluor, the largest publicly traded U.S. engineering company, said on Monday it would book about USD120 million for the contract, which can be a prelude to winning work for the entire project. It did not provide an estimate for the total cost of the project.
The Lake Charles ethane cracker, in what Louisiana's governor called the largest single manufacturing investment in state history, will produce ethylene to feed a nearby derivative chemicals facility that is also part of the design study.
It is one of a number of crackers considered for the Gulf Coast as companies seek to take advantage of U.S. natural gas prices that are currently only a fraction of elsewhere. Fluor is also working on large chemical project expansion for Dow Chemical Co in Texas.
Start-up for the Sasol project is forecast for 2017, with expected production of 1.5 million tons per year of ethylene.
Sasol said in December it planned for the Louisiana complex a gas-to-liquid facility that will produce 96,000 barrels per day of transportation fuel and other products.
Sasol Limited is an integrated energy and chemical company that began in Sasolburg, South Africa in 1950. It develops and commercialises technologies and builds and operates world-scale facilities to produce a range of product streams including liquid fuels, chemicals.
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