SP Chemicals negotiating to jointly build Vietnam's first mega cracker complex

15-Feb-08

SP Chemicals is in talks to jointly build Vietnam's first mega cracker complex. Negotiations are on with at least three companies based in Asia and the Middle East. SP's next step will be to submit a feasibility study to the government to get its investment licence by the end of this year. SP plans to schedule start-up of the complex in 2014, for which it has clinched an initial approval from the Vietnamese government. Similar projects in China have been valued at above US$2 bln (€1.4 bln) each. 30% of the project would be funded by capital and the balance through loans. Production will include ethylbenzene (EB) and ethylene dichloride (EDC) at the proposed 800,000 tpa cracker in Hoa Tam, Phu Yen province, to feed its styrene monomer (SM) and vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) plants in China. Other ethylene derivatives at the Vietnam project will include polyethylene (PE) and monoethylene glycol (MEG), as well as polypropylene (PP) and n-butanol using propylene as feedstock. Naphtha feedstock could be sourced from Tecnostar, a Russian trading firm, which is building an 8 mln tpa refinery in Phu Yen in two equal phases. Interestingly, Vietnam's first Dung Quat refinery project is still under construction, and has taken over a decade to materialise. Efforts by several companies from Russia and South Korea to form a joint venture for this project met with no success.