Chevron Phillips fires up new cracker

Chevron Phillips Chemical has started up an ethane cracker at its Cedar Bayou facility in Baytown, Texas. The new unit has the capacity to produce 1.5 million metric tons per year of ethylene from ethane. The company opened two new polyethylene plants in nearby Old Ocean, Texas, late last year. The new ethylene production will feed those units as well as α-olefins capacity. When CPChem unveiled the project in 2011, it was the first announcement of a new U.S. cracker in more than a decade. ExxonMobil is scheduled to start up its own Baytown cracker in the next few months.