Test-Tube Cornucopia

The new plant at Beaumont, Texas, had all the brilliance--and some of the unreality--of a Dali painting, with its soaring silver towers and bright blue and brown pipes, all threaded together by garish yellow catwalks. Built by Socony's Mobil Chemical Co. at a cost of $25 million, the plant is typical of the complex and colorful plants in one of the world's fastest-growing industries: petrochemicals.* Last week, in the air-conditioned control rooms of Mobil's plant, engineers began the first tests of the complex maze of pipes. By summer, when the plant will be in full production, it will be the world's biggest producer of high purity ethylene. a leading member of the nouveau riche petroleum family.

Socony is late in getting into an industry that in just two decades has grown from little more than a gleam of waste gases in chemists' test tubes to a $7 billion industry. The Gulf Coast from Pensacola to Brownsville, where 75% of the nation's producing facilities are located, has earned a new name, "the Golden Crescent." Petrochemical products reach into almost every phase of modern living and account for 60% of the sales of all chemicals and allied products. And the end is not in sight. Vice President K. J. Nelson of Enjay, giant Humble Oil & Refining's petrochemical division, says that even though the industry has grown 75% since 1955, he expects it to grow another 52% by 1965.

Building Blocks. The building blocks of this new giant are hydrogen and carbon atoms left over from refining natural gas and cracking crude oil to make gasoline.

Refineries process them into pure gases of butylene, propylene and ethylene. pipe them to petrochemical companies, which turn them into plastics or chemicals.

Ethylene. for example, becomes polyethylene plastic, which, rolled into sheets, is used for dry cleaners' bags and bread wrappers. Extruded into thread, it is used in cloth and rope; molded, it is used in squeeze bottles. As a liquid, it also becomes the ethylene glycol base in permanent-type antifreeze. Petrochemicals have made possible products such as synthetic detergents, which have 75% of the soap market, and synthetic rubber, which has 65% of the rubber market. They go into nylon, Dacron, vinyl, chemical fertilizers, aspirin, sulfa drugs--altogether 3,000 products. Some of the newest products pose a serious threat to zinc, steel and aluminum: Celanese Corp. and Du Pont have each developed plastics that are so tough that they may replace metal parts in autos, appliances and business machines. Nails of Celanese Celcon plastic can be driven into wood.

Handy Raw Materials. The reasons why the Golden Crescent produces most of the U.S. petrochemicals are plain: easy pipeline reach of 60% of the nation's oil and 67% of the gas reserves; cheap water transportation to customers who fabricate the plastics; some 300 underground salt domes with the brine needed in processing. Of the $6.7 billion in U.S. petrochemical plants, $4 billion is on the Golden Crescent. Under construction and in planning is almost $1 billion more.

The huge costs of research and building make petrochemicals no place for a small operator. Celanese's new plant to produce its plastics metal near Bishop, Texas, is expected to cost $10 million, in addition to the earlier expense of developing the plastic. National Distillers' plant, to be built near Houston, will probably run to $15 million. Monsanto has an $80 million ethylene plant on the planning boards that will outproduce Mobil's entrant.

There can be no relaxing after a plant is built. New processes that can shave fractions of a cent off the costs are coming along so fast that engineers are constantly redesigning plants. At its Baton Rouge plant, Humble Oil at first buried its pipes neatly underground. But it has dug them up so often for remodeling that it now has them running on easy to get at racks above ground.

After World War II, petrochemicals' growth was spurred mainly by chemical companies, except for Jersey Standard, Gulf and Shell. But now other oil companies such as Sun Oil and Mobil are moving in fast, because the profit rate is three times more on petrochemicals than on the rest of the oil and gas business. Cosden Petroleum Corp., for instance, made 18% of its refinery output into petrochemicals.

Expanding Needs. For all their burgeoning, petrochemicals come from such highly automated plants that they have not created jobs in proportion to the gross output. Only a handful of aluminum-helmeted workmen are needed to watch gauges and run the plants. In some cases the raw materials are never seen by the workmen; they arrive by pipe and leave in other pipes as finished products. Twelve years ago, 40,000 employees in the industry turned out about 300,000 Ibs. each of petrochemicals a year; now 150,000 turn out 373,000 Ibs. each.

With its scrambling expansion, many worry about overcapacity and destructive competition. But no one is willing to back out. Says Jersey Standard President M. J. Rathbone: "Out of this test-tube cornucopia will come a multitude of new products to meet the expanding needs of tomorrow." What about that distant day when oil reserves run out? Then, say chemists, they will get their hydrocarbons from the vast untapped coal reserves.

*Petrochemical literally means rock chemical, but actually it is loosely derived from the word petroleum (rock oil), and means chemicals from oil.

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