Total Opens Bayport Plant to Produce High-Purity Special Fluids

Total officially inaugurated the production of the company’s new high-purity special fluids facility in Bayport, Tex. Today’s ribbon-cutting represents the completion of a $100M investment by the global integrated energy producer and leading international oil and gas organization.

Total’s Bayport hydro de-aromatization (HDA) plant, the second in the world – modeled on a similar facility in France – will produce a range of 40 different high purity special fluids for customer use across a wide spectrum of industries including pharmaceuticals, crop protection, water treatment, printing inks, paints and coatings and cosmetics. With an annual production capacity of 250KT, and ideally situated to supply the biggest markets in the world, the Bayport facility will also produce synthetic biodegradable fluids for on- and off-shore drilling in keeping with Total’s commitment to the use of clean drilling fluids for exploration and production operations.

“Our new Bayport operation illustrates Total’s commitment to our business in the United States,” said Philippe Boisseau, Member of the Executive Committee of Total and President of Marketing & Services. “We will work closely with the Total refining facility in Port Arthur, which will provide some of the feedstock required to produce the high purity special fluids our customers want and need, as well as the Total Polyethylene facility at Bayport with whom we share the site.”

Boisseau continued, “The innovative, clean technology we will provide to our customers from Bayport is the result of a concerted and combined effort of several Total global business activities including Refining and Chemicals and Marketing and Services with knowledge and expertise transfer from engineers in our plant in France.”

The Bayport HDA plant utilizes a catalytic reaction process that, when combined with high pressure and distillation, enables the production of very specific high purity fluids, odorless, colorless, stable and with ultra low aromatic contents. These high purity fluids are customized to meet the needs of a wide variety of industrial applications. Overall employee headcount at the Bayport site is approximately 110. Construction of the new facility, located within Total’s existing Port Road operations, provided jobs for approximately 400 different workers and tradesmen during the built-out. The construction phase was completed in little over one year, and the entire project was completed with an excellent Safety Performance of 769,000 hours worked without incident or Lost Time Injury.

Bayport opening comes just weeks after the opening of a multi-million dollar innovation center in Grand Rapids, Michigan by Total’s automotive and aerospace company Hutchinson.