Operations Engineer

Interested in joining a winning team? A team whose employees share in the ownership of the business and are empowered to make a difference?

INEOS is a rapidly growing manufacturer of petrochemicals, specialty and intermediate chemicals and polymers. INEOS includes 67 manufacturing facilities in 16 countries throughout the world with approximately 17,000 employees. INEOS’s annual turnover is around $40bn making it one of the largest chemical companies in the world.

The INEOS Nitriles Green Lake Plant located near Victoria, Texas, is a world scale, state of the art chemical complex. The primary product from this site is Acrylonitrile, a chemical intermediate used in the production of acrylic fibers, plastics, and nitrile rubber. Acetonitrile and Hydrogen Cyanide are co-products of the Acrylonitrile production process. Acetonitrile is purified through a proprietary process to produce a very high quality material with little waste generated.

Increasing demand for Acrylonitrile presents many challenges and the need for innovative ideas to increase capacity and reduce down time, while maintaining or improving the operating cost. The processes are an excellent learning ground for an array of engineering skills: fluidized bed reaction, extraction, distillation, stripping, pumps, heat exchangers, advanced process control, integrated operations, and much more.

There is need for an Operations Engineer at its Green Lake chemicals plant in Port Lavaca, Texas located approximately 25 miles south of Victoria. The person in this position will work closely with operators and maintenance to assure the plant is operating at the desired designed conditions, production envelopes and troubleshoot any problems that prevent us from reaching those conditions. The Operations Engineer will also continually develop and implement ideas to increase capacity, lower cost and improve safety and environmental performance.

The area of responsibility includes unit operations throughout the Acrylonitrile Plant and the Port of Point Comfort. The successful candidate will also interface with the commercial group.

• All job activities should be executed in a safe and efficient manner consistent with the INEOS 20 Principles and the Culture of Prevention.
• Embrace INEOS Life Saving Rules in all aspects of the job.
• Responsible for the integrity management of assigned equipment.
• Define and periodically review Operating Envelopes of assigned equipment.
• Primary responsibility for daily plant operation.
• Establish communications with appropriate operations personnel.
• Report investigation results with appropriate conclusions and recommendations.
• Main liaison between Site and water treatment services provider (currently Nalco)
• Track yields, production, and feed stock information into month end closing.
• Issue daily shift Instructions.
• Develop process flow diagrams.
• Drive alarm management to completion and provide support for continuing success.
• Solicit input from all appropriate resources (engineering, operations, and maintenance) and balance conflicting requirements.
• Direct, coordinate, or participate in Process Safety Review or Management of Change process.
• Initiate communications with affected areas and produce progress reports.
• Provide engineering assistance and expertise to Operations and Maintenance as needed.
• Continuously initiate ways to improve plant operations, safety and environmental performance through day-to-day activities and recommendations for optimized unit conditions.
• Drive continuous variable cost improvement.
• Work with Ineos Nitriles Technologies group to optimize plant operating conditions to maximize profitability.
• Provide engineering assistance for environmental permitting requirements.
• Review and make recommendations to keep the plants operating envelope current.
• Manage capital and expense projects utilizing the Capital Value Process.
• Coordinate field construction and establish a schedule of activities.
• Coordinate activities with the other operations engineers to assure full value across the entire unit is realized.
• Spend time in the control room and listen to the ideas…