The commissioning ceremony of ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project was held in Huizhou Daya Bay Economic and Technological Development Zone on the morning of July 15. It is one of the major foreign-funded projects in China and the first major petrochemical project solely invested and built by a U.S. enterprise in China.
What is ethylene?
Ethylene is known as the "mother of the petrochemical industry" and is the most important basic raw material in organic chemical industry. The high-value-added basic chemical raw materials such as ethylene, polyethylene and polypropylene produced by the first phase of ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project will be widely used in fields such as consumer goods packaging, industrial packaging, sanitary products, automobiles and home appliances. With the completion of the project, it will further reduce the import dependence on high-performance polyolefins and provide key support for the industrial chains of plastics, clothing, electronic information, biomedicine and other industries in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.
Project Highlights
1."Two Firsts":
- This project is the first one converted from a reserved category to a planned category since the revision of the petrochemical industry planning and layout plan (2018) (in June 2019);
- It is the first wholly U.S.-invested petrochemical project (after the 2018 National Negative List for Foreign Investment Access opened up petrochemical projects).
-
ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project is one of the first seven major foreign-funded projects in China and one of the billion-dollar projects introduced to Guangdong in recent years.
-
The 1.6 million tons/year ethylene production capacity of ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project is the largest among single-set installations in China.
-
It only took 4 months from the first visit to Huizhou by ExxonMobil's senior management in May 2017 to the reaching of a strategic cooperation framework agreement between the two parties, setting a new record in Huizhou's investment promotion history.
-
The project completed the revision of the park plan in 4 months, completed the conversion to a planned project in 11 months, and started construction in one and a half years, creating the "Huizhou Speed" and "Guangdong Speed".
-
The project adopts an external pretreatment mode for environmental protection, which is the first of its kind in China.
-
The completion of ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project will significantly improve China's self-sufficiency rate of high-quality raw materials such as metallocene polyethylene, high-end polypropylene, and polyolefin elastomers. It will be conducive to the transformation and upgrading of Guangdong's petrochemical industry, further reduce the dependence on imports of high-performance polyolefins, and provide key support for the industrial chains of plastics, clothing, electronic information, biomedicine, etc. in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area.
-
The completion of ExxonMobil's R&D center will further empower the technological self-reliance of the petrochemical industry in Huizhou and even Guangdong Province, and help promote the high-quality development of Guangdong's petrochemical industry.
-
The supporting comprehensive energy station can receive the process tail gas from the project for combustion, realizing the comprehensive recycling of clean energy.
-
Senior management of ExxonMobil highly praised the Huizhou project, commenting that its construction was faster than expected, the cost was lower than expected, and the commissioning and trial production were the fastest.
At present, Daya Bay Development Zone adheres to taking the real economy as the foundation and manufacturing as the mainstay. Its integrated refining and chemical industry scale ranks among the top in the country, and it has ranked first among China's chemical parks for six consecutive years.
The ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project will inject strong impetus into Huizhou's efforts to build a global petrochemical industry highland and provide strong support for Guangdong in building a world-class green petrochemical industry cluster.
