The plan to build a propylene pipeline between Rotterdam / The Netherlands and Marl / Germany – see Plasteurope.com Web of 13.07.2004 – apparently has been abandoned. On 21 February 2007, European Pipeline Development Company (EPDC, Sittard / Netherlands; www.epdc.eu), which was to operate the pipeline, announced that the eight remaining stakeholders – BASF, Ineos, Celanese, DSM, Sabic, Sasol, Shell and Westgas – had decided to shelve the project due to the high cost involved. "We regret not being able to execute this project as planned," the pipeline company´s CEO, Rudi Demeuse, said in a statement.

The decision to build the pipeline was taken in 2000 by 13 European petrochemical producers. The intention was to ring in the next phase of the project to build an integrated propylene pipeline network across northwest Europe. Divided into ten sections, the 520-km pipeline was to link the Rotterdam /Antwerp region with Moers, Oberhausen and Marl / Germany via Tessenderlo and Geleen / Belgium and Cologne / Germany. The cost was estimated at EUR 200m and the project was originally due to be completed by Q2 2007.

As the first tender proved to be too expensive for the consortium members, a second was commissioned. According to Rolf Heyer, general manager of the German pipeline operator, Propylenpipeline Ruhr (PRG), the second tender received in February 2007, also was outside the consortium´s cost corridor, and this led to the cancellation of the project. One major factor, said EPDC general manager Henk Becker, was the escalation in the price of steel since 2000, which would make the pipeline around 50-60% more expensive than initially calculated.

A spokesperson for the regional development corporation of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, LEG (Düsseldorf / Germany; www.leg-nrw.de), which is the 50.2% majority stakeholder of PRG (the other 49.8% is owned by EPDC), denied that there had been talks about redistributing costs before EPDC finally gave up. Nevertheless, there is good reason to believe that the industry may have indeed lobbied public authorities to shoulder a higher share of the increased cost burden.

According to LEG, there will be additional talks during the next three weeks, with the state government, among others. One of the topics will be the deployment or possible repayment of the government funds of EUR 45m, some of which has already been paid out.

Some of the companies that might have benefited from the pipeline meanwhile have told Plasteurope.com they will seek other solutions for their feedstock needs. A spokesperson for Degussa parent RAG (Essen / Germany; www.rag.de), said the company may fall back on a previous plan to connect the Marl site to the harbour in nearby Duisburg, where propylene shipped from Rotterdam could be fed into its network.

A spokesperson for Bayer Industry Services, the infrastructure company for Bayer and Lanxess, said that, for it, the project was only of minor importance anyway. The link from Dormagen to Krefeld-Uerdingen might have produced synergies with its own plans for a CO2 pipeline along the same route, but there had never been any intention to connect Bayer´s polycarbonate plants to the propylene line.

The decision not to build the Benelux-to-Germany link could have more serious repercussions for Sabic Europe (Sittard / The Netherlands; www.sabic-europe.com), which intends to expand PP production up to 2009. A spokesperson said the company "regrets" that the connection will not be built, as it would have meant "increased flexibility." However, he said the cancellation will affect neither current production nor plans to raise PP output. At present, Sabic´s Geleen site receives propylene by ship as well as by truck.

See comment on petrochemicals in Northwest Europe.