Chexpress - May 28, 2014

North America

Acquisition

Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s (MPC) subsidiary Speedway LLC has signed a definitive agreement with Hess Corporation to acquire Hess Retail Holdings LLC. This transaction includes all of Hess’ retail locations, transport operations and shipper history on various pipelines, including approximately 40,000 barrels/day on Colonial Pipeline. The $2,874 billion acquisition is anticipated to close late in the third quarter of 2014, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. The acquisition will significantly expand MPC and Speedway’s retail presence from nine to 23 states.

Fine

Federal regulators have announced an $875,000 settlement with Chevron related to a pair of recent oil spills in Utah. The company has agreed on the settlement terms, resolving each of the federal penalties it faced in relation to the two spills. EPA officials say a June 2010 spill that dumped 33,000 gallons into Red Butte Creek and another 20,000-gallon leak near Willard Bay in 2013 violated the federal Clean Water Act.

Acquisitions

Terminix recently acquired assets of eight pest and wildlife control companies in 10 states. These acquisitions include Home Front Pest Control (Corona, Calif. area), R.P. Streiff Exterminating, Inc. (Tucson, Ariz.), Rove Pest Control (Bethel Heights, Ark.; Omaha, Neb.; Bixby, Okla.; and Nashville, Tenn.), Pioneer Wildlife Services, Inc. (Brooklyn, Conn. area), Generations Pest Control (Crestline, Calif.), Wild Animal Control (Plymouth, Mass.), Algee Termite & Pest Control, Inc. (Senatobia, Miss. area), and Ernie’s Pest Control, Inc. (Northwood, Ohio).

World

 

Leak

Samsung Total Petrochemicals Co Ltd had a small quantity of petrochemical product leak into the sea from a newly built paraxylene plant in South Korea. The company said the 2.4 kiloliters of para di ethyl benzene had been cleaned up. It leaked while flowing to test pipelines of the new plant. The new plant has an annual production capacity of 1 million tons of paraxylene and 420,000 tons of benzene.

Contract

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. received a five-year frame agreement for work at three Borealis facilities in Belgium. The contract value was not disclosed. The three facilities covered under the contract are Borealis Polymers N.V., Borealis Kallo N.V. and Borealis Antwerpen Compounding N.V. Under the thres of the contract, Jacobs’ scope of work includes study, engineering, procurement, construction management, and personal support services on a variety of projects at the three facilities.
 

Maintenance

BP has closed part of its Tangguh liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in West Papua, Indonesia for maintenance. The schedules repairs, which began on May 19, are expected to take 21 days to complete. The facility produces up to 7.6 million tons of LNG/year from its two existing liquefaction trains, supplying customers in Indonesia, South Korea, China, Japan and the United States. Work is underway to develop a third train at the facility, which BP expects to begin delivering gas in 2019.