Exxon Mobil acquires Singapore petrochemical plant to meet demand in Asia

Exxon Mobil Corp acquires refining and petrochemical plant owned by Jurong Aromatics (JAC) in Singapore to boost its aromatics production in Singapore to more than 3.5 million tonnes per year (tpy), including 1.8 million tpy of paraxylene, a raw material for textiles and bottles to meet demand in Asia.

The company expects to complete the transaction in the second half of 2017.

Gan Seow Kee, chairman and managing director of ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Pte Ltd. said that the plant will be integrated with Exxon Mobil’s existing petroleum complex on Jurong Island.

Singapore houses Exxon Mobil’s largest refining-petrochemical complex with a crude oil processing capacity of 592,000 barrels per day and two steam crackers.

JAC’s condensate splitter and petrochemical units – at a construction cost of US$2.4 billion – started operations in Asia in 2014 to produce paraxylene to meet demand from textile and bottle manufacturers in China.

JAC’s debt mounted, though, as commodities went into freefall in the middle of that year, and it stopped operations at end-2014 to fix a technical issue. Its lender BNP Paribas appointed accounting firm Borelli Walsh as the receiver and manager of JAC.

The JAC plant resumed operations in July 2016 under tolling agreements with BP and Glencore.

Exxon Mobil had outbid Lotte Chemical Corp with a price of 2 trillion won or about US$1.7 billion for the JAC plant.