While ExxonMobil considers building the world’s largest ethylene production plant in Gregory-Portland, LyondellBasell just completed expansion of an already existing plant in Corpus Christi. LyondellBasell is one of the world’s largest plastics, chemical and refining companies in the world. The Corpus Christi expansion increased the facility’s capacity to 2.5 billion pounds per year from 1.7 billion — a 50 percent increase. 
The expansion is part of the company’s goal to increase U.S. ethylene capacity by 2 billion pounds. It has also increased capacities at plants in Illinois, Iowa and three other Texas sites. LyondellBasell’s other Texas plants are in Channelview, La Porte and Matagorda. 
Ethylene, which is produced at the Corpus Christi plant, is a basic chemical building block used in consumer products such as housewares, construction materials, automotive parts, food packaging and personal care products. Global demand for the product grows at about 4 percent annually, according to an industry report. 
"As we look to meet growing, global demand for our products, we continue to seek the right opportunities that ensure we are well-positioned for the longer term," said Bob Patel, LyondellBasell CEO and chairman of the management board. "By expanding ethylene capacity in the U.S. through debottlenecks rather than long and costly greenfield developments, we quickly added substantial capacity for significantly less than the cost of a new plant.” 
LyondellBasell has invested about $2 billion in U.S. Gulf Coast expansion projects since 2012. It plans to invest another $3 billion in the region as well. The next big project is planned for La Porte, where the company announced it will construct a high-density polyethylene plant, which will be the first to use a new production technology. 
High-density polyethylene is one of the versatile plastics. It can be molded into almost any shape and is widely recyclable. Construction should be this year, according to a company statement, with start-up planned for 2019. 
Another expansion is underway in Channelview, where the company is developing a world-scale propylene oxide and tertiary butyl alcohol plant. 
The Corpus Christi expansion included 36 miles of pipe, 620 truckloads of concrete, 1 million linear feet of cable and about 1,700 tons of steel. Some 800,000 engineering and 8 million construction work hours went into completing the project. Local and state taxing districts should receive more than $10 million each year from the company, according to figures released by the Corpus Christi Regional Economic Development Corp. 
A global company, LyondellBasell has headquarters in Houston, Rotterdam, London and Hong Kong. The company has 55 manufacturing facilities in 18 countries.