INDUSTRY & BUSINESS Jefferson Buys Gulf Plant Takes over Conroe, Tex., plant; will make specialties and develop new processes there JEFFERSON
CHEMICAL
has
bought
Gulf Oil's Conroe, Tex., petrochemical plant, will convert it to a specialty chemical and intermediate scale manufacturing facility as well as a place for large scale development of new processes. Gulf picked up the plant when it took over Warren Petroleum in 1956, but closed it down three years later. The purchase comes on the heels of Gulfs agreeing to a Federal Trade Commission consent order to dispose of many of its holdings in Warren— now a wholly owned subsidiary of Gulf. Conroe is the only petrochemical plant to go; the rest are liquefied petroleum gas and natural gasoline facilities. Gulf has three years to dispose of the plants and hopes to net about $35 million from the sales. The purchase price of the Conroe plant was not revealed, but Gulf has been anxious to sell the plant for some time. In fact, Jefferson (owned 50% by American Cyanamid and 50% by Texaco) and Gulf were discussing the sale for several months before the FTC order was issued. Jefferson expects to have Conroe back on stream by mid-1960, will start to produce morpholine, an intermediate used to make rubber chemicals and corrosion inhibitors. Jefferson will use a new process, based on diethylene glycol, which it feels will be more profitable than the ethanolamine route it now uses at its plant Port Neches, Tex. Later this year, Jefferson will also make semicommercial amounts of ethylene and propylene oxide adducts and also polyethylene and polypropylene oxides. Also slated for Conroe's future are piperàzine, piperazine derivatives, and morpholine derivatives. Even with these products in production, Jefferson will still have excess facilities at Conroe to develop new processes being worked out at the company's research labs located in Austin, Tex. 22
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I960
Conroe fits well into Jefferson's future. The plant is located 40 miles from the firm's executive office in Houston and convenient distances from Austin and Port Neches. Jefferson needed more capacity to make specialties, since existing facilities were not large enough to meet its short term forecast for such products. Last year, Jefferson completed an estimated $40 million expansion program, but this was for major products, not special items. To add new capacity
for special products at Port Neches would have cost about twice as much as it would to buy and install additional equipment at Conroe. Besides being more economical, Conroe gives Jefferson the flexibility it needs for future development efforts—both short and long term. Despite being idle for several months, Conroe is still in good condition. About half of the processing vessels are made of stainless steel. There are seven processing areas for both batch and continuous operation. Also, there is a hydrogen unit, control rooms, equipment to handle sohds and liquids, plus other plant components such as offices, labs, and shipping facilities. Warren put the plant on stream in 1954 to develop a propane-oxidation pentaerythritol process. When Gulf took over Warren, it continued the process until 1959, when Gulf decided the plant was too small to justify continued operation of the oxidation process.
CONROE SWITCH. Petrochemical plant at Conroe, Tex., just bought by Jefferson Chemical, will be used to make specialties and to develop new processes being worked out at the firm's research labs at Austin, Tex.
