MEGlobal to build MEG production facility at Dow’s Oyster Creek/TX Operations
MEGlobal, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Equate Petrochemical Company, plans to construct a new world-scale monoethylene glycol (MEG) manufacturing facility at Dow’s Oyster Creek site in Freeport, Texas, USA. The new MEG facility will be owned by MEGlobal and is the Company’s first manufacturing unit in the United States. The new MEGlobal plant will create 1,400 construction jobs at the project’s peak, and the Company will employ approximately 50 new workers when it goes on stream in mid-2019.
The new site will benefit through a long-term ethylene supply agreement with Dow from its new ethylene cracker. Dow’s new ethylene cracker is part of the existing infrastructure that is intended to make the Dow Texas Operations attractive for locating the new MEG plant on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Construction continues to progress on the site, with the cracker more than 40% complete and on track for start-up in the second quarter of 2017. Dow will also complete ethane feedstock flexibility for an ethylene cracker at the Company’s Louisiana Operations site, on track for start-up in the second half of 2016.
Equate Petrochemical Company is an international joint venture between Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC), The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), Boubyan Petrochemical Company (BPC) and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Company (QPIC).
MEG is used in a number of market applications, including PET bottles and packaging, polyester fibres, antifreeze and coolants, paints, resins, deicing fluids, heat transfer fluids and construction materials.
