Ronnie Lim Business Times 10 Mar 12;
EXXONMOBIL'S second petrochemicals complex here, costing US$5 billion to US$6 billion - the US oil giant's biggest manufacturing site worldwide - 'is nearing completion', Rex Tillerson, its chairman and CEO, said in a presentation at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.
'Commissioning and start-up activities are expected to continue through 2012 and will provide a world-scale integrated platform with unparalleled feedstock flexibility,' he told investment analysts.
'The expansion will add 2.6 million tonnes per year of additional capacity and will help meet demand growth in Asia-Pacific,' Mr Tillerson said of its Singapore Parallel Train (SPT) complex, so called as it is being built parallel to ExxonMobil's first petrochemical complex here.
SPT was scheduled to be operational in the second half of last year, but this has been delayed by a year, with full project start-up now expected in the second half of this year.
ExxonMobil officials earlier said this was due to construction 'issues' arising from the project's scale and complexity.
The entire SPT complex comprises an upstream one million tonnes per annum ethylene cracker and six downstream plants, as well as its own 220-megawatt cogeneration plant to provide utilities.
An ExxonMobil spokesman here told BT yesterday: 'The (SPT) project is 98 per cent mechanically complete, and units have been progressively starting up, with product qualifications underway.'
'In January, we reached the milestone of producing our first metallocene polymer in Asia,' the spokesman added, referring to the start-up of the first downstream units at SPT. 'We anticipate that commissioning and start-up activities will continue through 2012.'
But a 98 per cent mechanical completion rate suggests that the main upstream cracker - which will supply feedstock to the downstream plants - is still not completed. Georges Grosliere, ExxonMobil Chemical's venture executive, had said last June that 'the main cracker (the heart of the SPT complex) . . . will be the last to be completed, on purpose'.
BT earlier reported that the main cracker, which is being built by US-based contractor Shaw Group, had run into some construction delays, with the latter reporting millions of dollars in cost overruns as a result.
Some good news finally emerged from Shaw last December when it said 'we continue to progress on our schedule with the project . . . and that it will be completed next year (2012), next summer'.
In his presentation, Mr Tillerson also said additional projects are also in progress here, 'including new facilities at ExxonMobil's Singapore refinery'.
He was apparently referring to a diesel hydrotreater expansion, reportedly costing US$500 million, at the 605,000 barrel-per-day refinery to produce more 'green' diesel for the growing regional market.
When it starts up in 2014, this ultra-low sulphur diesel (ULSD) plant will produce another nine million litres of ULSD daily, boosting ExxonMobil Singapore's production to over 25 million litres per day.
ExxonMobil has invested well over US$11 billion in its Singapore refinery/petrochemicals facility to-date.
