The Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corporation (CKPC) joint venture of Canada’s Pembina and Kuwait’s state petrochemicals firm PIC has awarded a Can$2.7bn ($2.1bn) engineering, procurement and construction contract for the propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit in an integrated PDH and polypropylene (PP) complex in Canada. The work will be carried out by the Canadian subsidiary of US firm Fluor and US firm Kiewit, with start-up of the PDH/PP complex expected in late 2023. CKPC’s plant will be built alongside Pembina’s Redwater fractionation complex in Alberta, to process 23,000 b/d of propane recovered from locally produced shale gas into 550,000 t/y of PP. The total cost of the complex is expected to be Can$4.5bn ($3.45bn).
PIC’s MEGlobal joint venture of PIC and US firm Dow Chemical and minority Kuwaiti investors Boubyan and Qurain also operates in Alberta, where it has three ethylene glycol plants with total capacity of 1.02mn t/y. MEGlobal also started up a 750,000 t/y plant in Freeport, Texas, in October (MEES, 18 October 2019) while PIC has a 25% stake in the SK Advanced 600,000 t/y PDH plant at Ulsan in Korea (MEES, 8 February 2019). (CONTINUED - 189 WORDS)