Project Profile
Value: US$3 billion
Location: state of Louisiana, Lake Charles, USA
Capacity: 1 million-tonne/year
Area: unknown
Start-up Year: late 2018 or early 2019
LACC LLC, a joint venture of Axiall Corp. and South Korea’s Lotte Chemical Corp selected the state of Louisiana in Lake Charles as the location for a possible ethylene cracker to be built alongside a related derivatives plant in December 2013. The 1 million-tonne/year project is estimated at a total capital investment of about US$3 billion for the project. In 2014, Axiall Corp. and Lotte Chemical Corp. finalized joint-venture plans for the design, construction, and operation of a proposed 1 million-tonne/year ethane cracker to be built in Louisiana. The companies have formed LACC LLC to design, build, and operate the cracker. Lotte Chemical also plans to build a wholly owned monoethylene glycol plant adjacent to the proposed cracker. Pending final approvals, the ethylene plant could begin commercial operation in late 2018 or early 2019. Axiall contributed a maximum capital investment of US$225 million between 2015 and 2019 towards engineering, procurement and construction phases of the cracker, with Lotte, as majority owner, to cover remaining construction costs.
Operators:
LACC LLC (joint venture of Axiall Corp. and Lotte Chemical Corp): Operator with 100% interest
Contractors:
CB&I: Contract to provide additional detailed engineering and early procurement services. The new scope of work under this latest early-works contract follows a previous contract let to CB&I for supply of proprietary ethylene technology and front-end engineering design services to LACC for the project, the service provider said. The proposed ethylene cracker will use CB&I’s latest ethylene technology, including its highly selective SRT cracking heaters as well as its recovery-section design, which features low-pressure separation and mixed refrigeration.