Oil giant can now produce over 500,000 tpa of solvents following its Jurong Island plant expansion
Ronnie Lim Business Times 4 Oct 08;
TO help it meet fast-growing regional demand, ExxonMobil Chemical has just completed a 130,000 tonnes per annum solvents expansion on Jurong Island, boosting its total Singapore solvents production capacity to over 500,000 tpa.
The expansion project - which sources earlier said costs as much as US$100 million - reinforces the Singapore plant's status as a world-class solvents facility. The company has two other world-class solvent plants in Texas and Belgium, and also smaller solvent plants in Thailand and Japan.
The solvents, or hydrocarbon fluids, are used for a wide range of applications including for drilling mud oil used in oil exploration, adhesives, metal working, polymer processing, industrial cleaning, coatings, household products and mining.
Work on the Jurong Island solvents expansion project started last June. Announcing its completion, Elissa Sterry, vice-president of Intermediates Global Business, this week said: 'This expansion reinforces ExxonMobil Chemical's commitment to meeting the hydrocarbon fluid needs of its global customers and those in Asia-Pacific, where growth is particularly strong.'
The new capacity will help it cater to Asia-Pacific demand for the solvents, which is growing at 6 per cent annually.
The company said that the strong regional demand for its products is spurred by both strong industrial growth as well as greater awareness of health, safety and environmental issues.
The solvents plant is just a minor part of on-going investments here by the world's largest oil company. ExxonMobil is also building a second mega petrochemical complex here, the estimated US$5 billion Singapore Parallel Train (SPT), which is expected to start up around 2011.
SPT will take ExxonMobil's total investment in Singapore to around US$11 billion, as the oil giant has already invested US$6.5 billion so far in its first petrochemical complex and its 605,000-barrel refinery here.
