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Dow Chemical Completes Construction Of Ethylene Production Facility In Freeport, Texas

03/29/2017
The Dow Chemical Company completed construction phase of its new, world-scale ethylene production facility in Freeport, Texas. The facility is located 62 miles south of Houston, and 46 miles southwest of Galveston on the Gulf of Mexico.

According to company officials, Dow’s “world-scale production unit, with a nameplate capacity of 1.5 million metric tons, is a central component of Dow’s $6 billion U.S. Gulf Coast investment program, designed to strengthen the competitiveness of its downstream, consumer-led businesses. It will feed Dow’s derivative investments, which will come on-line throughout 2017 and 2018.”

The Company noted it reached this milestone within one week of the originally planned date, which was set approximately two years ago. Dow’s ethylene unit is now progressing through the commissioning phase, with start-up expected by mid-year.

“This tremendous milestone represents the Dow team’s unwavering ability to deliver on our commitments to meet the needs of our customers, generate value for our shareholders and to create opportunities for our employees,” said Andrew Liveris, Dow’s Chairman & CEO.

“The Freeport ethylene unit is the cornerstone of our $6 billion investment in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Our growth investments leverage the advantaged shale gas supply available in the U.S., and represent thousands of new jobs and significant economic value, including exports of approximately 20 percent of our U.S. production,” he added.

“I’m incredibly proud of our team’s efforts to complete the complex construction phase of Dow’s new state-of-the-art ethylene facility. This unit will further enhance Dow’s industry-leading integration and provide the critical building blocks to bolster our competitive advantage in targeted consumer-led markets, including packaging, transportation, infrastructure and consumer care,” said Jim Fitterling, Dow’s President & COO.

“Not only does this investment leverage Dow’s early-mover advantage in shale gas, but it will also fuel the industry’s broadest and most differentiated derivatives slate, featuring Dow’s proprietary catalyst and process technologies, to meet growing consumer demand throughout the Americas,” he added.

“The addition of Dow’s TX-9 cracker to our Freeport site is a great milestone, officials added. That site now has over 4 million metric tons of olefins capacity to provide low-cost integration strength to our targeted high-growth derivatives,” said Doug May, Business President for Hydrocarbons. “This is an important proof point of the Dow team’s ability to deliver the projected cost and schedule performance on a project of this size and sets the tone for how we can execute the commissioning and start-up of the ethylene unit over the next few months.”

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