Chevron has announced that construction on its new $1.4 billion Pascagoula Refinery base oil plant is now complete and that the company expects to reach full production capability by late July.

First announced in August 2008, Chevron began construction on the base oil plant in 2011. The plant was previously targeted for start-up in the fourth quarter of 2013. It entered the mechanical start-up phase in January this year.

Dubbed the Pascagoula Base Oil Project, or PBOP, the plant is projected to produce 25,000 barrels per day of API Group II base oils when fully operational. PBOP will roughly double Chevron's premium base oil production. The company currently manufactures premium base oil at its refinery in Richmond, California (20,000 bpd of Group II base oils), and at a joint venture facility in Yeosu, Korea.

"We'll be considered the largest producer of premium base oils in the world," Chevron spokesman Alan Sudduth said. "The base oil produced in Pascagoula will be identical to that produced in South Korea and Richmond. They will be interchangeable", Sudduth said.

Chevron has said that output from Pascagoula is largely intended to serve markets in North America, Latin America and Europe.

The base oil facility will use Chevron's ISODEWAXING technology. Chevron began using ISODEWAXING commercially in 1993, resulting in higher yields and enabling a broader range of crude oil to be used in the manufacturing process. About two thirds of the world's premium base oil is manufactured with this technology.

The 3,000-acre complex in Pascagoula is the largest refinery in North America for California-based Chevron.