Nova Begins Engineering to Expand Styrene Capacity in Texas

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Nova Chemicals Corporation (NYSE: NCX) (TSX: CA:NCX) (Calgary, Alberta) has begun planning for a debottleneck of its Pasadena, Texas Bayport styrene plant that will ultimately increase the site's production by approximately 450,000 pounds per year, bringing the site's capacity to an estimated 1.7 billion pounds per year.

Nova Chemical has selected Washington Group International Incorporated (OTC BB: WGII) (Boise, Idaho) to perform some of the front-end engineering and assist with estimating and studies.

Construction for the project is not expected to begin until mid to late next year, bringing the new capacity to market in the fall of 2004. Industrialinfo.com has been tracking this project since Nova acquired the Bayport site from Huntsman Corporation in 1999.

Just last month, Nova completed a long-term supply agreement with BASF where BASF will supply Nova with styrene in Europe and Nova will provide a styrene supply to meet BASF's North American needs. This expansion is planned to increase Nova's styrene capacity to 3.05 billion pounds per year.