Shell and China National Offshore Oil Corp. green lit a third major expansion at its joint venture petrochemicals complex in China, almost doubling capacity.
The project will also give the site capability to make linear alpha olefins, a feedstock for polyalphaolefin base oils. PAOs are among a list of materials for which the national government wants to develop domestic capacity, and several small production sites have opened in recent years.
This latest phase of the joint venture will include a third ethylene cracker to be installed at the plant in the Daya Bay Economic & Technological Development Zone, Huizhou City, Guangdong Province, China. The plant is a 50-50 joint venture between Shell Nanhai BV, a subsidiary of Shell PLC, and CNOOC called CNOOC & Shell Petrochemicals Co.
The expansion will raise ethylene capacity by 1.6 million tons per year from 2.2 million t/y plus 320,000 t/y of polycarbonates and carbonate solvents.
It will also add associated downstream derivatives units to produce chemicals including linear alpha olefins, a feedstock for detergent alcohol and synthetic base stocks.
By the time the expansion is completed in 2028, the new facilities will target domestic demand and will produce chemicals widely used in the agriculture, industrial, construction, healthcare and consumer goods.
The PAO plants that have opened in China in recent years are all relatively small – a fraction of the largest plants in North America and Europe. Some use Fischer-Tropsch technology to make petroleum products from coal, whereas all of the other PAO sources in the world are petrochemical operations.