South Korea's DL E&C wins 1st petrochemical plant order in US

South Korean construction company DL E&C has landed its first contract to build a petrochemical plant in the US.

The company on Thursday said it received the final investment decision document from the client for the Golden Triangle Polymers project.

The combined construction cost is 1.6 trillion won ($1.2 billion) and DL E&C's incorporated subsidiary DL USA will jointly perform the work with Zachry Industrial, a San Antonio, Texas-based builder. DL USA's share of the order is 660 billion won and it will supervise the design and procurement of major equipment and materials.

The company Golden Triangle Polymers, a joint venture between Chevron Phillips Chemical of the US and QatarEnergy, is pursuing the project.

The project's groundbreaking ceremony is slated for this year and the targeted launch of commercial operations is for 2026.

The proposed facility will have two polyethylene production units with annual capacity of a million tons, the world's highest for the item.

DL E&C will perform operations and provide solutions optimized for project performance through advanced technologies such as modular and building information modeling at a site 180 km east of Houston in Orange County, Texas, on the state's border with Louisiana.

Also conducting other projects for Chevron Phillips Chemical, DL E&C has received high recognition for its technical know-how and operations. The Korean builder said it earned the order thanks to performing front end engineering design in 2019 to calculate the investment cost of the Golden Triangle Polymers project.

Yu Jae-ho, director of DL E&C's plant division, said, "This project has big meaning as DL E&C's first petrochemical plant order in the US," adding, "Through this project, we will form a bridgehead for targeting the American market through repeated recognition of our advanced technology and project implementation ability."

Write to Hye-In Lee at hey@hankyung.com