Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corporation presents to Chamber on $4.5 billion project

Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corporation’s Regulatory and Environment Manager Sarah Penny talks to Morinville & District Chamber of Commerce members about the $4.5 billion petrochemical upgrading facility being built in Sturgeon County.

by Stephen Dafoe
with files from Morinville News Staff

Pembina’s Wayne Carey and Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corporation’s Sarah Penny were the guest speakers at the Morinville & District Chamber of Commerce’s Apr. 17 luncheon. Carey spoke on Pembina’s history and forward-looking operations, and Penny spoke of the $4.5 billion petrochemical upgrading facility being built in Sturgeon County.

Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corporation (CKPC), which includes Calgary-based Pembina Pipeline Corp., made their final investment decision this past February to construct the petrochemical upgrading facility in Sturgeon County adjacent to Pembina’s Redwater fractionation complex.

Pembina Pipeline Corps. F. Wayne Carey speaks to Chamber members about the company.

The complex will process about 23,000 barrels per day of Alberta propane into polypropylene, which is a much higher-value plastic material used around the world to make products, including food packaging, auto parts and electronics.

At full operation, the facility will produce 550,000 metric tonnes of polypropylene and PP production.

Penny told luncheon attendees that Alberta propane is priced at a significant discount due to the costs associated with transporting product by rail. Converting the propane to polypropylene, the worlds second most commonly used polymer, at home will increase the value of the resource. Currently, Canada imports all of its polypropylene.

The facility would slow what she calls molecular tourism whereby Canada’s propane is shipped to petrochemical facilities in Asia, converted to polypropylene and then sent back to North America for manufacturing into many types of packaging and consumer products.

Penny said upgrading the molecule in Canada would reduce annual emissions by 180,000 tonnes of CO2e, an amount she compared to taking 40,000 vehicles off the road per year.

More than 3,000 workers are expected to be on site at the peak of construction with roughly 200 full-time operations and head office jobs on completion.

Construction is expected to start in 2019, with the complex fully operational by mid-2023.

Alberta Energy previously awarded CKPC $300 million conditional royalty credit in December 2016.

CKPC is a 50/50 joint venture between Canada’s Pembina Pipeline Corporation and Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Company K.S.C. (PIC).

CKPC sight prayer and blessing ceremony – Photo courtesy CKPC

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3 Comments

  1. This is the worst Company to work for they tell people to go do what they say and tell you it’s not good enough

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