Atlantic Canada Anticipates the Construction of its First Ethylene Plant

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Keltic Petrochemicals Incorporated (Halifax, Nova Scotia), a joint venture owned by private investors, is planning to construct the first ethylene plant to be located in the Atlantic Canada region. This new plant will produce approximately one billion pounds of ethylene per year when completed in 2005.

As an alliance engineer and limited partner in this project, Fluor Daniel Canada Incorporated (Calgary, Alberta) is performing some of the capital estimating and studies for the project. The selection of a technology provider for the ethylene cracking process is expected early next year and civil site construction is planned to begin by early fall of 2003.

The plant, which will be located near Guysborough, Nova Scotia, will use feedstock from the near by Sable Islands and feed multiple proposed downstream plants. Industrialinfo.com first reported this project as part of its project database in April of this year.

"This new capacity is badly needed as there are only four Canadian ethylene producers and none in the eastern region of Canada to support the production of downstream or derivative products," commented Trey Hamblet, Chemical Group Manager with Industrialinfo.com. "Canada's limited amount of ethylene capacity also makes it difficult to plan for maintenance downtime due to its drastic interruption for downstream dependents." There are currently only three turnarounds identified over the next two years in Canada according to Industrialinfo.com's Ethylene Turnaround Database.