ExxonMobil begins production at new US PE line

ExxonMobil has begun production at a new 650,000 tonnes/year high performance polyethylene (PE) line in Beaumont, Texas, the company announced on Wednesday.

Planned expansion at ExxonMobil's Beaumont, Texas integrated site will increase the facility's polyethylene production capacity by 65%. 

With the addition of the new production line, the total PE capacity of Exxon’s Beaumont site has been raised to 1.7m tonnes/year.

Exxon’s new line is the latest addition to a large and ongoing wave of PE capacity expansion in the US, which has seen over 4m tonnes/year of new PE capacity added in the country since 2017.

As domestic demand for PE within the US is not rising quickly enough to absorb all the new capacity additions, much of the additional capacity is intended to supply the export market.

“The availability of new supplies of domestically produced natural gas liquids provides us with a significant advantage when expanding polyethylene production to meet worldwide demand growth,” said Karen McKee, president of ExxonMobil Chemical Company.

The new Beaumont PE line is part of ExxonMobil’s Growing the Gulf initiative, which included plans to build and expand manufacturing facilities along the U.S Gulf Coast, creating more than 45,000 jobs across the region.

PE is the most widely used plastic in the world, primarily found in packaging including plastic bags, plastic films and geomembranes.