Our plans for growth

To achieve this objective, we have a simple strategy:

• Invest in our integrated chemical-refining manufacturing assets to access and process cost-competitive feedstocks.
• Maintain our strong product portfolio, which is underpinned by proprietary technologies, while investing in next-generation technologies.
• Build on our excellent customer relationships.

And, of course, we strive to operate safely and efficiently at every level of our organisation, every day of every year.

But it is not enough to stand still. To remain competitive, we must also grow.

Our growth strategy includes investing to boost capacity and efficiency at our existing assets and building new world-scale assets, often with joint venture partners.

Investing in existing assets

The Shell Chemical LP facility at Geismar, Louisiana

In the US, the Shell Chemical LP site at Geismar, Louisiana is already one of the largest integrated ethylene oxide (EO) and ethoxylation facilities in the world. We are considering plans to debottleneck the existing assets, plus invest in a new crude EO unit. Changing our cracker configuration in the US means that we can make full use of the readily-available ethylene from the Shell lower olefins plants at Deer Park, Texas, and Norco, Louisiana.

In Asia, we have taken the final investment decision to debottleneck our Singapore ethylene cracker on Pulau Bukom (Bukom Island). This is expected to increase the capacity of olefins and aromatics by more than 20%. We are also considering a variety of projects to expand our petrochemical complex on Shell Jurong Island in Singapore. Singapore is a major chemical manufacturing hub that benefits from easy access to a variety of chemical feedstocks as well as a logistics advantage in shipping to other markets in Asia.

In Europe, we are considering a debottleneck of the crude ethylene oxide plant and investment in a new high-purity EO (HPEO) purification column at our Moerdijk site in the Netherlands. The plant has already had one major debottleneck; the additional HPEO would be important to maintain supply/demand balance in Europe.

Options for future growth

Construction underway at the Pearl Gas-to-Liquids plant in Qatar

In the Middle East, we are working with Qatar Petroleum on evaluating a proposed new petrochemicals complex in Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar. The scope under evaluation includes a cracker with feedstock coming from natural gas projects in Qatar’s North Field and Shell’s Pearl GTL plant. It also potentially includes what would be the world’s largest mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) unit. Shell’s proprietary OMEGA process technology would be used in the MEG unit.

In the US, Shell is assessing the commercial feasibility of a chemicals plant in the Appalachian region. This could include a cracker to upgrade locally-produced Marcellus shale gas, a MEG plant and a polyethylene unit to serve customers in the north-east of the US.

In China, Shell is working with PetroChina and Qatar Petroleum to build a proposed refinery and petrochemicals complex at Taizhou, Zhejiang province.