Chexpress - February 10, 2011

North America

Lubricant Plant

Chevron Corp. will build a $1.4 billion lubricants plant in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The facility will extend Chevron’s existing refinery in Pascagoula and will produce base oil. When complete, the plant will produce at least 25,000 barrels of base oil/day, doubling Chevron’s manufacturing capacity. The oil produced there is expected to serve the North American, Latin American and European markets. Construction is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2013.

Restart Steps

TPC Group Inc. has commenced the next steps toward the restart of certain of its dehydrogenation assets at the company’s Houston operations with the approval by the Board of Directors of a detailed engineering study. The dehydrogenation assets would serve to provide isobutylene feedstock for the company’s rapidly growing fuels products and performance products. Total cost for this phase of engineering will be approximately $5 million and will be completed this summer.

Divestiture

Eastman Chemical Co. has completed the previously announced sale of its Performance Polymers segment’s PET business, related assets, and technology to DAK Americas, LLC. The total cash proceeds of the transaction were $600 million, subject to post-closing adjustment for working capital. The divestiture includes the company’s Performance Polymers segment assets at its Columbia, South Carolina site, but will not impact product lines in the company’s Specialty Plastics segment.

Gulf Pipeline Contract

The Bayou Companies LLC has received a contract to provide coatings, welding and support for more than 180 miles of 18-inch steel pipe for use on a new hydrogen pipeline in the Gulf Coast. Under the contract with Air Products and Chemicals Inc., Bayou will provide corrosion coating, concrete weight coating, double joint welding and logistic support on the project. Bayou is expected to begin work on the project by the end of the first quarter of 2011 and complete it by the end of the third quarter. The pipeline is expected to be operational in 2012.

World

Purchase

Ensco PLC has agreed to buy Pride International Inc. in a $7.3 billion cash and stock deal that will create the world’s second largest off-shore drilling company. The combined company will retain the name Ensco and will have virtually all of its senior executives located in London, England. The combined company will be among the most geographically diverse drillers with current operations and drilling contracts spanning more than 25 different countries on six continents in nearly every major deep and shallow-water basin around the world.

Multi-Year Contracts

South Hampton Resources has signed two new contracts. A five-year contract with a North America-based company and a three-year contract with an international-based organization were signed for a total value of more than $29 million over the length of the contracts.

Catalytic Processes

UOP LLC will collaborate with the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for the development of catalytic processes for petrochemical production. The two parties have signed a five-year agreement that will allow university professors and researchers to collaborate with company scientists on catalyst development and processes for aromatics production. Aromatics are a critical raw material used in the production of petrochemicals, such as plastics and detergents.

Specialty Plastics Unit

Borouge has awarded a contract worth $169 million to Hyundai Engineering and Construction of South Korea to build a cross-linkable polyethylene (XLPE) unit at its petrochemical plant in Ruwais, Abu Dhabi. With an annual capacity of 80,000 tons, the unit is an added-value complement to the low density polyethylene (LDPE) unit, enabling the manufacture of innovative plastics solutions for low to high voltage energy cables.

Distributor Deal

Independent Chemical Corporation has been appointed the exclusive distributor in the U.S. of Italian specialty chemical and active ingredients producer Vevy Europe. Vevy Europe has been a leading European producer of specialty chemicals, intermediates and active ingredients for the past 50 years.