Equate starts up ops at Kuwait’s Olefins II cracker

LONDON (ICIS news)–Equate Petrochemical Co has started commercial production at its 850,000 tonne/year Olefins II cracker at Shuaiba in Kuwait, the company said on Monday.

The cracker, owned by The Kuwait Olefins Co and operated by Equate, was built to provide ethylene supplies to Equate’s benzene-styrene monomer unit and expanded polyethylene (PE) and monoethylene glycol (MEG) plants.

Equate was increasing the capacity of its existing 600,000 tonne/year high density PE (HDPE)/linear low density PE (LLDPE) swing plant by 50%.

The company is a joint venture that includes xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Co (PIC) and US chemicals major Dow Chemical, with each owning a 42.5% stake.

The remaining stake is held by local investors by Boubyan Petrochemicals Co and Qurain Petrochemical Industries Co.

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