Exxon pushes ahead with plans to raise Asia
Exxon pushes ahead with plans to raise Asia
SINGAPORE (Reuter): Exxon Corp is going ahead with a US$450
million chemical investment in Thailand despite the country's
current economic turmoil as part of efforts to double Asia-
Pacific revenue, a senior company official said yesterday.
"We have an attractive refinery (in Thailand) and we think we
have the fundamentals to start work on the aromatics plant," said
Ken Robertson, senior vice president, basic chemicals and
intermediates of Exxon Chemical Co, a unit of Exxon Corp.
Robertson said the company was not concerned with the current
economic turmoil in Thailand.
"We are looking at the long term. We were projecting they were
going to be in a bad state," he said.
Robertson said the Exxon board will make a final decision on
the project in September and he expected them to approve the
building of the plant for a commerical start up around 2000.
The Thai Board of Investment in May granted incentives for the
11.1 billion baht project to build a 350,000 ton-per-year (tpa)
paraxylene plant at Sri Racha where Exxon currently operates a
145,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery.
Paraxylene is a feedstock chemical for the production of
polyester and fibre products.
Exxon Chemical's global earnings in 1996 totalled $1.2 billion
compared to $2.02 billion in 1995.
Robertson said Exxon Chemical was hoping to raise its revenue
from the Asia-Pacific region from the current "under 10 percent
to over 20 percent" once the Thai plant as well as the $2 billion
Singapore complex comes onstream in mid 2000.
Robertson said construction of the Singapore steam cracker,
which makes basic petrochemicals, will begin in mid 1998 once
land reclamation works are completed.
The steam cracker, Exxon's largest single plant worldwide,
will produce annually 800,000 tons of ethylene, 400,000 tons of
propylene. It will integrated with a 450,000-ton polyethylene and
a 275,000-ton polypropylene plants.
Exxon said the company will build a 170-megawatt co-generation
power plant at the new complex that will meet about 75 percent of
the energy needs of the steam cracker as well as the existing
refinery and the newly commissioned aromatics plant.
Exxon operates a 230,000-bpd refinery adjacent to the proposed
steam cracker and has a 50-percent share in a new 350,000-tpa
paraxylene plant.
Robertson said the company was in talks to buy gas from
Indonesia's Natuna field that is expected to be piped into
Singapore in 2000.
Exxon is also hoping to start up a plastizer plant in China at
the same time that the Singapore complex comes onstream.
Robertson said the company was in talks with Sinopec to build the
50,000-tpa plant.