LyondellBasell Industries N.V is an American multinational

chemical A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...

company, incorporated in the Netherlands with U.S. operations headquartered in

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

and offices in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, UK. The company is the largest licensor of

polyethylene Polyethylene or polythene (abbreviated PE; IUPAC name polyethene or poly(methylene)) is the most commonly produced plastic. It is a polymer, primarily used for packaging (plastic bags, plastic films, geomembranes and containers including bott ...

and

polypropylene Polypropylene (PP), also known as polypropene, is a thermoplastic polymer used in a wide variety of applications. It is produced via chain-growth polymerization from the monomer Propene, propylene. Polypropylene belongs to the group of polyolefin ...

technologies. It also produces

ethylene Ethylene (IUPAC name: ethene) is a hydrocarbon which has the formula or . It is a colourless, flammable gas with a faint "sweet and musky" odour when pure. It is the simplest alkene (a hydrocarbon with carbon–carbon bond, carbon–carbon doub ...

propylene Propylene, also known as propene, is an unsaturated organic compound with the chemical formula . It has one double bond, and is the second simplest member of the alkene class of hydrocarbons. It is a colorless gas with a faint petroleum-like o ...

polyolefins A polyolefin is a type of polymer with the general formula (CH2CHR)n where R is an alkyl group. They are usually derived from a small set of simple olefins ( alkenes). Dominant in a commercial sense are polyethylene and polypropylene. More specia ...

, and oxyfuels. LyondellBasell was formed in December 2007 by the acquisition of Lyondell Chemical Company by Basell Polyolefins for $12.7 billion. As of 2016, Lyondell was the third largest independent chemical manufacturer in the United States.

History

Early history

Since its establishment in 1985 from facilities belonging to the Atlantic Richfield Company ( ARCO), the company grew through stock swaps with Occidental Chemicals and Millennium Chemicals in 1997, which formed Equistar Chemicals of which each entity were partners. Lyondell purchased the outstanding shares from each of its partners to gain total control of Equistar which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lyondell. Lyondell bought ARCO Chemical in 1998 for $5.6 billion including ARCO's entire 82.2% ownership stake. In 2004, Lyondell purchased Millennium Chemicals in a stock-swap deal valued at $2.3 billion. In August 2006, Lyondell acquired Citgo's interest in the Lyondell-Citgo Refinery for $2.1 billion, and renamed the facility Houston Refining. Chemical maker Basell Polyolefins purchased Lyondell in December 2007, creating the new company LyondellBasell Industries AF S.C.A., one of the largest chemical companies in the world at that time. It was owned by Access Industries, a privately held, U.S.-based industrial group. LyondellBasell is the third largest independent chemical manufacturer in the world and is headquartered in

and

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

Expansion

LyondellBasell's United States operations filed for

Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, wh ...

in January 2009, and emerged from bankruptcy in April 2010. Its former parent company, LyondellBasell Industries AF S.C.A. was replaced by LyondellBasell Industries N.V. It was listed on the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

on October 14, 2010. In 2012, 1 Houston Center, the building housing LyondellBasell's Houston headquarters since 1986, was renamed LyondellBasell Tower. In 2014, LyondellBasell announced that it was installing two large cracking furnaces at its Channelview plant, and the following year the company announced it would double production capacity at the Bayport Underwood plant. LyondellBasell acquired the compounding assets of Zylog Plastalloys, an India-based company, in November 2015. The acquisition made LyondellBasell the third largest poly (propylene) materials producer in India. In June 2016, LyondellBasell announced a factory in Northern China. It was the third facility for LyondellBasell to open in China, following

Guangzhou Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...

and

Suzhou Suzhou is a major prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. As part of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis, it is a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Founded in 514 BC, Suzhou rapidly grew in size by the ...

. In September 2016, LyondellBasell announced that it would build a $700 million polyethylene plant at the La Porte manufacturing complex on the Houston Ship Channel that would produce 1.1 billion pounds of polyethylene annually. The company started construction on a La Porte plant in May 2017. The company completed an expansion of its Corpus Christi ethylene plant in January 2017. The plant's capacity was increased by 50 percent to produce 2.5 billion pounds annually. That same year,

Hurricane Harvey Hurricane Harvey was a devastating tropical cyclone that made landfall in Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cy ...

hit the United States and affected the company's Texas Gulf Coast operations. The Houston Ship Channel was temporarily closed, which prevented crude tankers from reaching refineries. The La Porte facility was damaged but came back online in late October. In December 2017, LyondellBasell partnered with

Suez Suez (, , , ) is a Port#Seaport, seaport city with a population of about 800,000 in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez on the Red Sea, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal. It is the capital and largest c ...

, a French water and waste management company, in the first joint venture between a major plastics and chemicals company and a resource management company. LyondellBasell and

Odebrecht Odebrecht S.A. (), officially known as Novonor, is a Brazilian conglomerate, headquartered in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, consisting of diversified businesses in the fields of engineering, construction, chemicals and petrochemicals. The company w ...

entered into exclusive talks for LYB to acquire control of Braskem in June 2018, but did not consummate the acquisition. During July 2018, LyondellBasell announced a partnership with

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; ) is both a German public research university in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and a research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 when the University of Karlsruhe (), founde ...

(KIT) in Germany to advance chemical recycling of plastic materials and assist the global efforts towards the

circular economy A circular economy (also referred to as circularity or CE) is a model of resource Production (economics), production and Resource consumption, consumption in any economy that involves sharing, leasing, Reuse, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and ...

and plastic waste recycling needs. The focus of the venture is to develop a new catalyst and process technology to decompose post-consumer plastic waste, such as packaging, into monomers for reuse in polymerization processes. In August 2018, LyondellBasell finalized their acquisition of A. Schulman Inc. in a $2.25 billion deal. That same month, it broke ground on the world's largest propylene oxide and tertiary butyl alcohol plant in Channelview, Texas. The plant is estimated to produce 1 billion pounds of propylene oxide and 2.2 billion pounds of tertiary butyl alcohol annually. LyondellBasell will export the majority of its products via the Houston Ship Channel. LyondellBasell also announced in September that it and its joint partner, Covestro, kicked-off a large investment project in Maasvlakte-Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Circular Steam Project incorporates an innovative technology into the existing production plant, to convert its water-based waste into energy and is an important contribution to the Dutch government's reduction targets. In December 2023, LyondellBasell sold its ethylene oxide and derivatives business to

INEOS Ineos Group Limited is a British multinational conglomerate headquartered and registered in London. it was the fourth largest chemical company in the world, with additional operations in fuel, packaging and food, construction, automotive, ph ...

for $700 million.

Houston refinery shutdown

In April 2022, LyondellBasell announced plans to shutter its Houston refinery by the end of 2023, following two failed attempts to sell it. These plans were later pushed back to Q1 2025 due to a period of strong refining margins.

Philanthropy

LyondellBasell holds an annual Global Care Day. Company employees volunteer for community service projects in 20 countries.

Awards and recognition

The

American Chemistry Council American Chemistry Council (ACC), known as the Manufacturing Chemists' Association at its founding in 1872 then as the Chemical Manufacturers' Association (from 1978 until 2000), is an industry trade association for American chemical companies, b ...

recognized LyondellBasell with its Responsible Care Company of the Year award in 2014. In 2015, the American Heart Association recognized LyondellBasell's Cincinnati Technology Center with the Fit-Friendly Worksite Platinum Award. The Fit-Friendly program emphasizes employee health and company culture surrounding physical health. LyondellBasell was named #2 on the list of Top 25 Foreign-owned Chemical Producers by ''

Chemical & Engineering News ''Chemical & Engineering News'' (''C&EN'') is a weekly news magazine published by the American Chemical Society (ACS), providing professional and technical news and analysis in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering.''Fortune Magazine's'' list of the World's Most Admired Companies. Additionally, Bob Patel received the 2018 ICIS Kavaler Award in September. The winner of the ICIS Kavaler Award is selected by his/her peers — the senior executives of the ICIS Top 40 Power Players listing, a global ranking of the leaders making the greatest positive impact on their companies and the chemical industry published in ICIS Chemical Business magazine.

Environmental issues

LyondellBasell's, among other petrochemical facilities at

Berre-L'Étang Berre-l'Étang (; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southern France. Population See also * Étang de Berre * Communes of the Bouches-du ...

, France, are regularly criticized in the French media and by local authorities for their large-scale flaring activities generating, among other nuisances, giant smoke plumes with lengths reaching dozens of miles. The concomitant atmospheric pollution includes organic chemical compounds such as

carcinogen A carcinogen () is any agent that promotes the development of cancer. Carcinogens can include synthetic chemicals, naturally occurring substances, physical agents such as ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, and biologic agents such as viruse ...

benzene Benzene is an Organic compound, organic chemical compound with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecular formula C6H6. The benzene molecule is composed of six carbon atoms joined in a planar hexagonal Ring (chemistry), ring with one hyd ...

butadiene 1,3-Butadiene () is the organic compound with the formula CH2=CH-CH=CH2. It is a colorless gas that is easily condensed to a liquid. It is important industrially as a precursor to synthetic rubber. The molecule can be viewed as the union of two ...

and

toluene Toluene (), also known as toluol (), is a substituted aromatic hydrocarbon with the chemical formula , often abbreviated as , where Ph stands for the phenyl group. It is a colorless, water Water is an inorganic compound with the c ...

. Not only the nearby cities of Vitrolles, Rognac and

Marignane Marignane (; ) is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southern France. Geography It is a component of the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, and the largest suburb of the city of Marsei ...

suffer from this pollution, but it is also held responsible for the deterioration of the air quality in the city center of

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

, at an approximate distance of 20 km from LyondellBasell's facility. Similar concerns were raised about flaring activities on other LyondellBasell sites, e.g. the Corpus Christi facility and the Lake Charles facility.

Manufacturing facilities

;North American manufacturing facilities ;South American manufacturing facilities ;European manufacturing facilities ;Asian manufacturing facilities ;

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lyondellbasell Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Chemical companies of the Netherlands Chemical companies of the United States Manufacturing companies based in Houston Manufacturing companies based in Rotterdam Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 Manufacturing companies established in 2007 Multinational companies headquartered in the Netherlands 2010 initial public offerings