Idemitsu, Mitsui to build U.S. petchem plant costing US$1.05bil

TOKYO: Japanese oil refiner Idemitsu Kosan and trading house Mitsui & Co plan to build a petrochemical plant in the United States at a cost of up to 100 billion yen ($1.05 billion), using ethylene supplies from Dow Chemical Co, the Nikkei business daily said on Monday, without citing sources.

The complex for making surfactants and alpha-olefins with capacity of around 300,000 metric tons (330,693 tons) per year could come online as early as 2017. It would be situated next to a planned Dow plant in Texas slated for launch in 2017 that makes low-cost ethylene from cheap North American shale gas, the report said.