PTT plans capacity expansion: to invest B10bn in new gas separation plant

05-Apr-05

Thailand's PTT Plc plans to build its sixth gas separation plant at an investment of 10 billion baht, as part of its plan to expand production capacity of olefins. The Rayong plant, with a capacity of 650 million cubic feet per day (mcfd) of gas separation is scheduled to be commercially operational in 2008. The plant will supply feedstock to accommodate the ethylene capacity expansion of PTT's olefins venture, PTT Polyethylene Co, to one million tpa from 410,000 tpa currently. The sixth gas separation plant will serve only PTT Polyethylene's capacity expansion. In the third-stage plan, the supply of feedstock will become more stable as it focuses on the development of new petrochemical complexes in Map Ta Phut and the surrounding areas and will be catered to by other sources. So PTT will have to consider whether it needs to build a seventh gas separation plant. PTT Polyethylene is a 50:50 joint venture between PTT and its subsidiary National Petrochemical Plc (NPC). Originally planned was ethylene capacity of 410,000 tpa and low-density polyethylene capacity of 300,000 tpa at a project cost of US$400 million. But the planned capacity of ethylene has been revised increasingly to reach one million tpa in line with expected increased demand from throughout Asia.