LyondellBasell Industries N.V. is a multinational chemical company incorporated in the Netherlands with U.S. operations headquartered in Houston, Texas, and offices in London, UK. The company is the largest licensor of polyethylene and polypropylene technologies. It also produces ethylene, propylene, polyolefins, and oxyfuels. LyondellBasell was formed in December 2007 by the acquisition of Lyondell Chemical Company by Basell Polyolefins for $12.7 billion. As of 2016, Lyondell was the third largest independent chemical manufacturer in the United States. History Early history Since its establishment in 1985 from facilities belonging to the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), the company grew through stock swaps with Occidental Chemicals and Millennium Chemicals in 1997 which formed Equistar Chemicals of which each entity were partners. Lyondell purchased the outstanding shares from each of its partners to gain total control of Equistar which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lyondell. Lyondell bought ARCO Chemical in 1998 for $5.6 billion including ARCO's entire 82.2% ownership stake. In 2004, Lyondell purchased Millennium Chemicals in a stock-swap deal at $2.3 billion. In August 2006, Lyondell acquired Citgo's interest in the Lyondell-Citgo Refinery for $2.1 billion, and renamed the facility Houston Refining. Chemical maker Basell Polyolefins purchased Lyondell in December 2007, creating the new company LyondellBasell Industries AF S.C.A., one of the largest chemical companies in the world at that time. It was owned by Access Industries, a privately held, U.S.-based industrial group. LyondellBasell is the third largest independent chemical manufacturer in the world and is headquartered in Houston and Rotterdam . Expansion LyondellBasell's United States operations filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2009 and emerged from bankruptcy in April 2010. Its former parent company, LyondellBasell Industries AF S.C.A. was replaced by LyondellBasell Industries N.V. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on October 14, 2010. In 2012, 1 Houston Center, the building housing LyondellBasell's Houston headquarters since 1986, was renamed LyondellBasell Tower. In 2014, LyondellBasell announced that it was installing two large cracking furnaces at its Channelview plant, and the following year the company announced it would double production capacity at the Bayport Underwood plant. LyondellBasell acquired the compounding assets of Zylog Plastalloys, an India-based company, in November 2015. The acquisition made LyondellBasell the third largest PP compounds producer in India. In June 2016, LyondellBasell announced a factory in Northern China. It was the third facility for LyondellBasell to open in China, following Guangzhou and Suzhou. In