The Eleme Petrochemicals Complex was built in 1995 by a consortium comprising of Chiyoda, JGC, and Kobe Steel, of Japan, Technimont of Italy, and Spie Batignolles of France. It is designed to produce 240,000 metric tons per year of polyethylene, and 95,000 metric tons per year of polypropylene. It has four process plants and is supported by utility services and offsite covering water treatment, steam and power generation, effluent treatment facilities, storage facilities for feedstock and intermediate hydrocarbon and product storage. The complex has a paved 22-km network of roads and 44 km of culverts to facilitate drainage. It has well-equipped laboratories to cater to the need for quality control and quality assurance. The feedstock NGL for this complex is supplied by the AGIP/Philips Conoco/NNPC joint venture.

Olefins plant
The olefins plant uses technology licensed from M.W. Kellogg (USA). The unit has six millisecond furnaces, of which five are usually in operation while the sixth is either in the de-coking process or on standby. The NGL is fed into the fractionator where C5+ hydrocarbons are recovered at the bottom and C2 to C4 fractions are fed to cracker furnaces along with recycle gas of ethane, propane and butanes. Ethylene and propylene are the main products, while pentanes, hydrogen and fuel gas are the by-products.

Polyethylene plant
The PE plant uses Sclairtech technology licensed by DuPont (Novachem) of Canada (first generation license). The swing-plant was built by Kobe Steel of Japan and is capable of producing HDPE as well as LLDPE. The capacity of the plant is 240,000 tpa. The plant has one autoclave or continuous-stir tank reactor and one tubular reactor, which are used separately or in combination. The technology uses two different catalyst systems to tailor make products suitable for narrow molecular and broad molecular weight distribution. Based on the use of different catalysts, the plant can go for either HDPE or LLDPE. The unique feature of this process is ability to swing from HDPE to LLDPE and vice versa in short spans of time. However, no shutdown is required for grade changeover within the catalyst system.

Polypropylene plant
The PP plant is based on the Basell (Montell) Spheripol technology, which is the leading technology in the world. The plant was constructed by Technimont, a well-known Italian contracting company that has built a number of Basell plants worldwide. The capacity of the plant is 95,000 tpa and the plant can produce homo-polymers, random-polymers as well as co-polymers.

Butene plant
The butene plant was constructed by Kobe Steel of Japan in 1996 based on technology licensed from the Institut Francais du Petrol (France). The butene plant has a capacity of 22,000 tpa and provides butene for the PE plant to produce the co-monomer.