BT : More reclaimed land for new industries on Jurong Island

Business Times - 16 Nov 2010

More reclaimed land for new industries on Jurong Island

Move comes as Shell ramps up output at its HPEO plant

By RONNIE LIM

(SINGAPORE) More land is being reclaimed off Ayer Merbau on Jurong Island to accommodate new investors like soap and detergent makers at a new value-add petrochemicals corridor shaping up there, as well as other potential downstream parties, BT has learnt.

Shell just last week said it was ramping production of high-purity ethylene oxide (HPEO) needed by investors at the new corridor there.

And sources said that JTC Corporation is reclaiming about 18 hectares off Ayer Merbau, starting with some 7-8 ha in the south and another 5 ha in the north of the area.

Ayer Merbau is where Shell's mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) plant - part of its new US$3 billion petrochemical complex - and its now wholly-owned Ethylene Glycols Singapore plant, is sited.

Shell just last week bought out its Japanese partners in EGS, with this now enabling it to better integrate the EGS and MEG plants so that it can increase its HPEO production to 100,000 tonnes per annum right away, or up from 60,000 tpa currently.

Shell Chemicals vice-president, Iain Lo, told BT last Thursday that this will allow it to supply enough HPEO to downstream customers whose new plants will be up and running in about 18-24 months time. HPEO - which through ethoxylation, like putting ethylene oxide on alcohols - is used for products like soap and detergent.

Shell is now evaluating longer-term HPEO requirements, including from other customers, before proceeding with its plans to add even more capacity by investing in a new HPEO column or plant at its MEG plant.

In connection with the land work at Ayer Merbau, JTC has also just tendered for a consultant to do environmental monitoring and to come up with a management plan for the reclamation there.

Sources estimate that the reclamation is expected to add some 10 per cent more land to Ayer Merbau, where Singapore's first petrochemical complex, Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore is also sited.

BT earlier reported that some other Japanese and German investors are also looking at possible new downstream plant investments there.

Germany's Lanxess, which is currently building a 400 million euros (S$687 million) synthetic rubber plant on Jurong Island, is said to be discussing butadiene feedstock for a possible second plant here to produce Nd-PBR, another hard-wearing synthetic rubber used for making tyres.

Its most likely butadiene source here will be Shell, whose new petrochemicals complex here has a butadient extraction unit.

Another is Mitsui Chemicals, which has already invested over S$1 billion in five plants here, and which indicated earlier this year that it was now considering a sixth plant in Singapore.

This could possibly be for additional capacity for elastomers (flexible and light resin modifiers that improve the impact resistance of moulded products like car bumpers).

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