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Williams moves closer to building petrochemical facility
Kay Cashman PNA Publisher
CMAI’s study on the feasibility of a petrochemical business in Alaska is complete, Cavan Carlton told PNA Nov. 18. The results are encouraging, prompting Williams to take the next step toward building a petrochemical facility near its North Pole refinery.
Carlton, director of gas pipeline business development for Williams, said CMAI, one of the world’s leading petrochemical consulting firms, concluded that “under certain economic conditions a petrochemical business can work.”
Must have Alaska Highway gasline At the top of a list of conditions is a large supply of natural gas liquids.
“This will only work if you have a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope that runs down an Alaska Highway route,” Carlton said.
Another condition is lowering the cost of ocean and rail freight to get the product to global markets. There are several ways that can be done, he said, and Williams is working on a solution now.
“We also have to dig a little deeper into the capital costs. Some of the construction cost assumptions used by CMAI are low for Interior Alaska. They need to be refined a little bit more,” Carlton said.
The final hurdle will be the composition of the gas from the North Slope.
“It has to be rich enough …. There has to be enough ethane in the gas to make it work; to build a petrochemical facility,” he said. Gas composition is considered proprietary information. “But from our research and discussions with the producers, we feel there will be enough ethane in the stream for a world scale facility,” Carlton said.
Project narrowed to polyethylene CMAI, hired last May after Williams completed an internal review that suggested a petrochemical business in Interior Alaska might be feasible, also narrowed the focus of the project to the production of polyethylene pellets, a component in the manufacture of plastics.
Initially, Williams was also looking at extracting methane and propane for local use, but CMAI’s economic analysis vetoed both activities.
The project now includes a gas processing facility near North Pole to extract ethane and re-inject the unused liquids; a world class ethane cracker to convert ethane into ethylene; and a polyethylene plant to convert ethylene into polyethylene pellets — some 2 million tons of pellets each year.
The next step The next step is another internal review, Carlton said.
Williams has committed some of its best people in several areas of the company to that analysis, he said.
“But we will stop short of actually announcing a project. We prefer to let the overall North Slope gas commercialization project develop a bit more first because a petrochemical plant won’t work without a supply of gas,” Carlton said.
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