NOVA Chemicals to 20% ethylene production hike at Corunna cracker

19-Dec-13

NOVA Chemicals plans to increase ethylene production capacity at its Corunna, Ontario, cracker by 20% during 2014-2018. Prior to that, the company is revamping the Corunna cracker to use NGL feedstock during Q1-2014. Currently, the Corunna facility produces 1.85 billion lbs of ethylene per year. As per Platts, other expansion plans include a retrofit of its Moore high-density polyethylene line and debottlenecking at the Moore low density polyethylene line in Mooretown, Ontario. The expansions are a part of the company's NOVA 2020 growth strategy, which is aimed at leveraging growing North American NGL feedstock supply and improved derivative demand. On Monday, Kinder Morgan said it had signed a letter of intent with NOVA Chemicals to build a 50,000 bpd NGL pipeline from the Utica and Marcellus shales in the US Northeast to Windsor, Ontario. Additionally, NOVA said Wednesday it continues to evaluates options for a second Advanced SCLAIRTECH technology facility, which would be used for production of LLDPE. Such a facility could be located in Ontario, the U.S. Gulf Coast or elsewhere in the world, and which would be implemented in the final phase of the NOVA 2020 growth strategy. NOVA is also building a LLDPE reactor at the Joffre, Alberta facility, which is expected to be completed in Q1 2016. The expansion adds 950 million lbs/year of linear low density production the plant. The company has a current annual LLDPE capacity of 1.48 billion lb/year at the Joffre plant. The company operates three crackers at its Joffre site with total ethylene capacity of 6.2 billion lbs/yr.