PETALING JAYA: Lotte Chemical Titan Holding Bhd (LCT) said its shale gas project in the US already commenced operations last month.
The project is a 40:60 joint venture investment between LCT and South Korea’s Lotte Chemical Corp (LCC) with a total investment capital of US$3.1 billion (RM13 billion).
The shale gas project is a large-scale petrochemical complex comprising two manufacturing facilities located in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
According to LCT’s filing with the stock exchange, the petrochemical facility comprises an ethane cracker plant and a monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant that has the capacity to produce 1 million tonnes of ethylene and 700,000 tonnes of MEG per year, respectively.
It disclosed that the ethane cracker plant was developed by means of a joint venture structure between Lotte Chemical USA Corp (LC USA), which has a 88% equity interest while Axiall Corp’s wholly owned subsidiary Eagle US 2 LLC holds the remaining 12%.
LCT’s effective stake in the ethane cracker plant is 32.5%.
LCT said half of the ethylene produced by the plant will be sold to Axiall Corp, while the other half will be used as primary feedstock in the MEG plant.
The MEG plant is wholly owned by LC USA and LCT has a 40% equity interest in this facility.
With the LC USA facility coming onboard, Lotte Group’s global ethylene production capacity will reach 4.5 million tonnes per year, making it the largest domestic and seventh largest producer of ethylene in the world.
