Chexpress - February 24, 2011

North America

Acquisition

Gilead Sciences will pay up to $600 million for Calistoga Pharmaceuticals. The acquisition adds a key oncology compound to Gilead’s late-stage pipeline. CAL-101 blocks P13K-delta, an enzyme over-expressed in many blood cancers. The drug will start Phase II trials in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma later this year.

Phosgene

DuPont officials say the company isn’t going to manufacture any phosgene-related products at its Belle, West Virginia plant this year. The officials said the decision isn’t related to a phosgene leak in January that resulted in the death of a worker and that business conditions have changed since the accident. The company’s small lots manufacturing unit in Belle will be idled, but no jobs will be lost.

Joint Venture

Holly Corp. and Frontier Oil Corp. are combining in an all-stock deal valued at nearly $3 billion. The new company, based in Dallas, will be called HollyFrontier Corp. It will have a refining capacity of more than 440,000 barrels/day across five refineries and will serve the mid-continent, Rocky Mountain and Southwest refining markets as well as have access to growing domestic and Canadian crude oil supplies.

Biodiesel Fueling Station

SunPower Premium Cold Flow Biodiesel has added a public, 24-hour biodiesel fueling station in Cumberland, Wisconsin. The fueling station is part of the company’s operational expansion plan that will take place over the coming years. The credit-card controlled fueling station will be operational by March.

Fine

An Ecuadorean judge ruled that Chevron Corp. was responsible for oil drilling contamination in Ecuador’s northern jungle and ordered the company to pay $9.5 billion in damages and cleanup costs. Chevron called the decision “illegitimate and unenforceable” and said that it would appeal.

Supply Deal

NOVA Chemicals has definitive agreements with Hess Corporation and Vantage Pipeline Canada Inc./Vantage Pipeline US LP to purchase and transport ethane production from Hess’ Tioga Gas Plant in North Dakota via a proposed pipeline to Alberta, Canada. NOVA Chemicals has the right to purchase 100 percent of the ethane produced at the Tioga Gas Plant under a long-term arrangement. The proposed pipeline will be constructed, owned and operated by Vantage and is expected to start up in the fourth quarter of 2012, subject to receipt of customary regulatory and other approvals. It is designed to allow for the transport of up to 60,000 barrels/day of ethane and will be capable of further capacity additions if required in the future.

World

Joint Venture

BP PLC has signed a $7.2 billion deal with India’s Reliance Industries to take a stake in key oil and gas blocks and form a joint venture to market gas. BP will take a 30 percent stake in 23 oil and gas blocks and form a 50:50 joint venture between the two companies for the sourcing and marketing of gas. The deal includes potential future performance payments of up to $1.8 billion. The total investment in the joint venture could amount to $20 billion.

Sale

Royal Dutch Shell Plc. and Essar Energy have entered into a $1.3 billion agreement for the sale of Shell’s Stanlow refinery in Britain and for its inventory of crude oil and refined products. Essar plans to pay $350 million for the refinery and some $780 million for the onsite inventory. Essar has until April 1 to sign the final agreement or pay a $50 million break fee. Shell has agreed to pay a fee of $10 million if it breaks off the deal. They also agreed to an exclusive five-year supply of crude by Shell.

Purchase

Clariant AG plans to buy Sued-Chemie AG in a deal valued at $2.7 billion. The takeover must still be approved by competition authorities.

Plant Contract

Jacobs Engineering Group signed a contract in December 2010 with the Saudi Industrial Investment Group (SIIG) and Arabian Chevron Phillips Petrochemical Company Limited (ACP) to provide engineering, procurement and construction management services for a polyamide 6.6 manufacturing plant and a number of polymer conversion projects. The projects will be located in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

Plant

BP is proceeding with its project for a major increase in purified terephthalic acid (PTA) production capacity at the BP Zhuhai Chemical Company Limited site in Guangdong Province, China. This is a joint venture between BP and Zhuhai Port Co, Ltd. In addition, BP announced it is planning to build a new world-scale PTA plant at the same site. The planned debottleneck at Zhuhai will increase capacity by more than 200,000 tons/year from its second unit, making the total PTA production capacity at the site 1.7 million tons/year. The expansion is expected to be fully operational in the first quarter of 2012. The new third plant is expected to have a capacity of 1,250,000 tons/year and is expected to come on stream in 2014.

Capacity Addition

The Performance Products division of Huntsman Corp. is going ahead with the engineering design for a 40,000-ton capacity expansion program at is polyetheramine facility in Singapore. Huntsman plans to invest more than $70 million at its Jurong Island plant, more than doubling the site’s manufacturing capabilities.

Plant Expansion

The Shaw Group Inc. has been awarded a contract by Qatar Petrochemical Company Ltd. Q.S.C. to provide basic engineering services for the expansion of a 720,000 ton/year ethylene plant in Mesaieed, Qatar.

Investment

Indorama plans to invest more than $591 million in a joint venture project to construct a 400,000 tons/year polyethylene production plant in Uzbekistan. The project is being carried out jointly by Indorama and Uzbekneftegaz.