PetroChina Initiates Production at USD 1.2 Billion Ethane to Ethylene Plant in Xinjiang

PetroChina which is one of the Asia’s largest oil and gas producers has announced that the company has launched a USD 1.24 billion Ethane fed Ethylene project in China’s far western region of Xinjiang. 

The new plant has production capacity of 600000 tonner per year of Ethylene and 300000 tonnes per year of high density Polyethylene, and 300000 tonnes per year of full density Polyethylene. 

The new project will help in reducing the dependence on foreign Ethylene. And the Ethane which is to be used as feedstock will be separated from natural gas produced at the Tarim oilfield. 

The company will now have an Ethylene production capacity of 2 million tonnes per year. In early August, PetroChina also finished the trial operation of 800000 tonnes per year Ethane to Ethylene plant at Shaanxi province. 

This capacity addition will ease the supply pressure in Asia which is mostly dependent on United States for its Ethylene requirements as the Gulf Coast region manufactures world’s 20% of Ethylene. 

This might also help in stabilization of prices of petrochemicals such as Polyethylene in the Asia Pacific region. 

As per ChemAnalyst, “with the petrochemicals already increasing in demand at a healthy rate, the launch comes at a time when the world is struggling with the supply constraints caused by the Ida hurricane in US which is the major petrochemical hub in North America. With the increased supply from China, Polyethylene and Ethylene markets will tend to stabilize from the supply crunches faced during the outages caused by the hurricane.”