Westlake Chemical (Houston, Texas / USA; www.westlake.com) is proceeding apace with its plans to convert the cracker in Calvert City, Kentucky / USA to light ethane feedstock and simultaneously raise the site’s output – see also Plasteurope.com of 09.10.2012. On 29 January, the company awarded French engineering group Technip (Paris; www.technip.com) with the necessary engineering and procurement contracts to switch the facility to ethane and to realise the 85,000 t/y ethylene capacity expansion.

The upgrade will strengthen Westlake’s vinyls integration at the site, where the US company also produces PVC and plans to raise output to 590,000 t/y by late 2014. Commenting on the award, Nello Uccelletti, senior vice president Onshore at Technip, said, “We will utilise our state-of-the-art proprietary technology from our portfolio, recently expanded by the acquisition of Stone & Webster process technologies and associated oil and gas engineering capabilities.” Technip acquired the latter technologies as part of its purchase of Shaw Group – see Plasteurope.com of 28.05.2012.