ChExpress Blog

Chexpress - December 17, 2014

Wed, 17 Dec 2014 23:25:04 +0000

North America

Sales

Dow Chemical is selling two businesses for a total of $225 million. Vertellus Specialty Materials will buy Dow’s sodium borohydride business and Valfilm North America will buy a Dow polyolefin films plant in Findlay, Ohio. Dow expects both sales to close during the first quarter of 2015. The divestiture of the sodium borohydride business includes a manufacturing facility in Elma, Washington. The polyolefin plant in Ohio will close in January, but Valfilm will restart it in February.

Expansion

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has completed an ethylene expansion at its Sweeny complex in Old Ocean, Texas. With the addition of a tenth furnace to ethylene unit 33 at the complex, the expansion is expected to increase annual production by 200 million pounds. Expansion construction began in 2013. The Sweeny complex is now capable of producing roughly 12 million pounds of ethylene per day, or 4.3 billion pounds annually.

HDPE Project

INEOS Olefins & Polymers USA and Sasol have broken ground on their high-density polyethylene (HDPE) manufacturing joint venture at the INEOS Battleground Manufacturing Complex in La Porte, Texas. The facility will produce 470 kilotons per year of bimodal HDPE using Innovene S process technology licensed from INEOS Technologies. The intention is to produce a limited number of grades allowing high grade efficiencies. INEOS will operate the 50/50 joint venture. The plant is expected to start up in 2016.

Gasifier Vessel

Linde North America has completed installation of the gasifier vessel, a significant step in the construction of its new gasification train at its La Porte, Texas facility. The plant is part of a more than $250 million investment that also includes a state-of-the-art air separation unit, which is also under construction. The gasification plant is scheduled to come on-stream early in 2015. The new gasifier will convert natural gas into syngas. The air separation unit is slated to be operational in December 2014. The plant will also produce liquid oxygen, nitrogen and argon.

World

Heat Exchanger Order

Alfa Laval has won an order to supply Alfa Laval Packinox heat exchangers to a petrochemical plant in South Korea. The order has a value of approximately SEK 85 million and delivery is scheduled for 2015. The heat exchangers will be used in the production of mixed Xylenes, ingredients in the manufacturing of synthetic nylons and PET bottles.

Maintenance

Yanbu National Petrochemicals Co will be shutting its ethylene glycol plant in April 2015 for between 35 and 60 days for planned maintenance. The financial impact on the company is estimated to be around $119.9 million.

Investment

Bharat Petroleum Corp will invest $741.44 million to diversify into the petrochemicals business, moving the state refiner beyond refining and retailing to boost margins. The company will produce niche petrochemical products that are predominantly imported into India at its Kochi refinery using propylene that will be available once the ongoing refinery expansion is completed. The company plans to boost capacity at its Kochi refinery to 310,000 barrels/day from the current 190,000 barrels/day by May 2016. The project proposal is submitted and awaiting environmental clearance. The petrochemical unit is expected to come on stream during financial year 2018-2019.

Chexpress - December 3, 2014

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 19:26:56 +0000

North America

Merger

Kinder Morgan, Inc. has completed its acquisition of the outstanding equity securities of Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, L.P., Kinder Morgan Management, LLC and El Paso Pipeline Partners, L.P. The approximately $76 billion transaction was initially announced earlier this year on August 10. Kinder Morgan, Inc. is the largest energy infrastructure company in North America. It owns an interest in or operates approximately 80,000 miles of pipelines and 180 terminals. The company’s pipelines transport natural gas, gasoline, crude oil, CO2 and other products, and its terminals store petroleum products and chemicals, and handle bulk materials like coal and petroleum coke.

Approval

British Columbia approved a liquefied natural gas export terminal being developed by Petronas, along with two pipelines to service Canada’s LNG industry. A federal environmental review of Petronas’ Pacific NorthWest LNG project is continuing, with Petronas expected to make a final investment decision on the $11 billion facility before the end of the year. In addition to the federal review, Petronas must now meet eight social and environmental conditions set out in the provincial approval and secure various permits from all levels of government. Petronas is also in the process of negotiating with aboriginal communities and refining its terminal design plans to mitigate the impact on sensitive fish populations.

Acquisition

Halliburton is buying Baker Hughes in a cash-and-stock deal worth $34.6 billion. Global oil prices have fallen 31 percent over the past 5 months to levels not seen in four years, which has forced the industry to cut costs by delaying or scaling back drilling. This means less work for companies that manage oil and gas fields for energy companies like Halliburton and Baker Hughes. It is believed that the combined company will be able to reduce costs by $2 billion a year.

World

Biosludge

Sasol has opened an industrial plant that converts toxic waste sludge into fertilizer. The Secunda project in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province produces synthetic fuels like petrol and gas by burning coal, a process that leaves behind 80,000 tons/year of toxic waste (or biosludge). Sasol used to burn the waste or send it to a landfill. Now, the new waste-to-fertilizer plant at Secunda will use bacteria and fungi micro-organisms to break down the biosludge and convert it into organic compost, which can be recycled as fertilizer.

Restart

An affiliate of Saudi International Petrochemical Co (Sipchem) has restarted a methanol plant after scheduled maintenance. The International Methanol Co. (IMC) plant, which produces 967,000 tons of methanol/year, was shut on Nov. 3 for three weeks for maintenance and repairs. IMC Is 65 percent owned by Sipchem, while a group of Japanese companies hold the rest.

Thinner-diaper technology

BASF will invest $624 million over the next two years in upgrading its production plants to make superabsorbers that allow for thinner diapers. The market launch of the new generation of superabsorbers will start at the end of 2016. Superabsorbent polymers can absorb and retain a large amount of liquid and are the main component in baby diapers, incontinence products and feminine hygiene products.

Investment

Ineos announced plans to invest $1 billion in shale gas exploration in Britain. The investment is subject to Ineos winning UK shale gas licenses currently being decided. The investment would mainly cover exploration costs.

Chexpress - November 12, 2014

Wed, 12 Nov 2014 13:33:00 +0000

North America

Proposed Cracker

Shell Chemical LP has exercised its option to purchase a Monaca, Pennsylvania site where it has proposed building an ethylene cracker. Shell is purchasing Horsehead Holding Co.’s former zinc smelter site. Shell is performing a multi-year review of the site, including environmental analysis, engineering design studies, evaluation of ethane supply and economic viability. A closing date for the purchase has yet to be established.

Furnace Supply

Sasol awarded Technip a contract to provide engineering and procurement for eight proprietary Ultra Selective Conversion (USC) furnaces for an ethane cracker and derivatives complex to be located in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The award follows Sasol’s selection of Technip’s ethylene technology and front end engineering design (FEED) for the cracker, which will produce an estimated 1.5 million tons/year of ethylene.

Ethane Cracker Design Contract

Technip has entered into a contract to supply its ethylene technology and process design package (PDP) for an ethane cracker for the proposed ASCENT (Appalachian Shale Cracker Enterprise) petrochemical complex currently being evaluated by Odebrecht and Braskem in Parkersburg, West Virginia. By using ethane from shale gas, this cracker will produce ethylene to be used in polyethylene plants.

Capacity Expansion

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has launched a study to expand its low viscosity polyalphaolefins (PAO) capacity by 10,000 metric tons/year of capacity at is Cedar Bayou plant in Baytown, Texas. The plant’s current capacity is 48,000 metric tons/year. The company has filed the necessary environmental notifications with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Final project approval is likely to be sought in the second quarter of 2015, with project completion targeted for 2016.

World

Construction Postponed

SOCAR has delayed the completion of a major plant to process oil, gas and petrochemicals worth up to $16.5 billion near Baku, Azerbaijan by four years until 2030 due to a lack of funds. The construction of a gas processing plant and petrochemicals plant worth $8.45 billion is now due to be completed by 2020 instead of 2017, while an oil refinery worth $8 billion is expected to be completed by 2030 and not 2026. The new complex will replace SOCAR’s two ageing downstream refineries (Baku Oil Refinery and Oil Refinery Azerneftyag).

Funding

PTT Pcl will finalize its funding plan for a $22 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in Vietnam in the third quarter of 2015. PTT will join with Saudi Aramco to develop the project, which includes a 400,000 barrel/day refinery and an olefins and aromatic petrochemical plant making 5 million tons/year. PTT and Aramco will each own 40 percent of the project, with the Vietnamese government holding the remaining 20 percent. Construction could begin in 2016 with operations then starting in 2021.

Maintenance

An affiliate of Saudi International Petrochemical Co (Sipchem) will shut a methanol plant for around three weeks for maintenance and some repairs. The shutdown will boost efficiency and production. As a result of the outage, Sipchem will incur losses of $9.3 million. The company has taken precautions to alleviate the impact of the shutdown on its customers.

Chexpress - October 29, 2014

Wed, 29 Oct 2014 12:13:00 +0000

North America

Ethane Cracker

Sasol will build an $8.1 billion plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The plant will convert natural gas into plastics ingredient ethylene as part of the biggest overseas investment by a South African company. This effort is expected to be followed by plans to build an integrated gas-to-liquids and chemicals facility there too. The planned cracker will produce 1.5 million tons of ethylene/year for use in plastics and chemicals. Sasol will invest an additional $800 million in infrastructure and utility improvements, as well as on land acquisition.

Contract

Fluor Technip Integrated was awarded a contract to continue to support Sasol with the detailed design, procurement and construction of its ethane cracker and derivatives complex in Westlake, Louisiana (as outlined above). The new complex will be constructed adjacent to Sasol’s existing facility. Flour Technip Integrated will be responsible for the 1.5 million tons/year ethane cracker, downstream derivative units and associated utilities, offsites and infrastructure work. Construction is expected to be complete in 2018.

Capacity Expansion

Westlake Chemical Corporation will expand its ethylene capacity and make other capital improvements in Lake Charles, Louisiana with an investment of more than $330 million. This expansion is expected to be completed in late 2015 or early 2016 and will increase ethane-based ethylene capacity at the plant by approximately 250 million pounds/year.

World

Compounding Deal

Celanese Japan Limited and Setsunakasei Co. Ltd. (Setsunan) have signed a letter of intent to pursue an agreement whereby Setsunan will compound Celanese engineered polymers in Setsunan’s facilities in Japan. Celanese engineering polymers are used in a wide array of applications across many industries, including automotive, consumer and industrial segments. These polymers may be processed by injection molding, extrusion, compression, molding, rotational casting or blow molding.

LNG Project

Eni has signed a cooperation agreement with Korea Gas Corporation (Kogas) to further strengthen their relationship in a number of areas, particularly in the upstream and LNG (liquefied natural gas) sectors. The agreement allows the companies to jointly pursue opportunities worldwide. The companies expect the agreement to facilitate the LNG development of Area 4 in Mozambique where Eni is operator with a 50 percent interest, Kogas, Galp Energia and ENH partners in the agreement with 10 percent interest each, and CNPC with 20 percent indirect participation. Area 4’s total resources are estimated to be approximately 85 trillion cubic feet of gas in place and ready to enter in the development phase in 2015.

Refining Capacity Boost

PDVSA plans to invest $20 billion to expand its domestic refining capacity in Venezuela by 20 percent. PDVSA plans to add 265,000 barrels/day of refining capacity to the current 1.3 million barrels/day. The plans include doubling the capacity of the 146,000 barrels/day El Palito facility and boosting capacity of the 187,000 barrels/day Puerto la Cruz refinery by 20,000 to 25,000 barrels/day. The plans also involve optimizing the operations of the Paraguana Refining Center.

Chexpress - October 15, 2014

Wed, 15 Oct 2014 11:51:00 +0000

North America

Ammonia Plant

Linde Engineering North America (LENA) is building an ammonia plant for J.R. Simplot Company adjacent to Simplot’s existing phosphate fertilizer complex in Rock Springs, Wyoming. The 600 tons/day plant will supply both the Rock Springs and Pocatello, Idaho phosphate fertilizer production locations while also providing the capacity to meet Simplot’s next phase of anticipated phosphate expansion plans at its Rock Springs location. It is expected to take two years to complete the new plant.

Acquisition

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP has completed the acquisition of Chevron Petrochemical Pipeline LLC from Chevron Pipe Line Company. Chevron Petrochemical Pipeline owned the Evangeline ethylene pipeline system. Evangeline will be operated by Boardwalk Louisiana Midstream (BLM), a subsidiary of Boardwalk. The Evangeline system is a 176-mile interstate pipeline capable of transporting approximately 2.6 billion pounds of ethylene/year and is supported by long-term, fee-based contracts. The pipeline transports ethylene between Port Neches, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Specialty Pipe

LyondellBasell’s 3,900-acre petrochemical facility is undergoing an expansion to increase production of ethylene units as well as propylene, butadiene and benzene. Tioga was selected by KBR, the expansion contractor, as its supplier of choice over several other bidders for the LyondellBasell ethanol plant expansion project. The project requires timely delivery of specialty pipes for chemical composition made of certain percentages and composition of material outside of the industry ASTM standards.

Apprenticeship Program

The Dow Chemical Company will launch a U.S. Apprenticeship pilot program at various Dow sites across the nation in 2015. Dow’s U.S. Apprenticeship program will offer participants two to four years of training and on-the-job experience in some of the most sought after and highest earning technical specialties in the industry. Through partnerships between Dow and local community colleges, the program will combine classroom training and hands-on learning to build skills and experience. Upon program completion, apprentices will be evaluated for employment opportunities at Dow. Dow will pilot the program at five of tis manufacturing sites in Texas (Freeport, Bayport, Deer Park, Seadrift and Texas City) as well as at its manufacturing sites in Pittsburg, California and the Chicago area. The company expects to hire approximately 60 apprentices for the pilot program in 2015, offering training for roles such as Chemical Process Operators, Instrumentation & Equipment Technicians and Analyzer Technicians.

World

Polypropylene Unit

CB&I has been awarded a contract by Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Group Co. Ltd. for the license and engineering design of a polypropylene unit to be built in Lingwu, China. The unit will use CB&I’s Novolen technology to produce 600,000 metric tons/year of polypropylene. There are already two units using this technology on the site and at the completion of the third unit, the capacity of the site will be increased to 1.6 million metric tons/year and the plant will be able to produce the full range of polypropylene grades.

Pipelines

Kashagan will have to spend up to another $3.6 billion to replace leaking oil and gas pipelines, which could also delay the restart of production. Production at the Kashagan reservoir, the world’s biggest oil find in recent times, started in September 2013, but was halted just a few weeks later after the discovery of gas leaks in the $50 billion project’s pipeline network. Replacing the pipelines at the Kazakhstan oilfield will cost between $1.6 billion and $3.6 billion. The final cost of the replacement mainly depends on the resistance to corrosion of the pipes used in laying the new pipelines.

Pipeline

China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) has received government approval for the design of the Chinese section of a giant pipeline that is due to ship $400 billion worth of Russian natural gas to China. According to the initial designs, the pipeline will start from Heihe city and run through the provinces of Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin Municipality, Shandong, and Jiangsu to reach Shanghai. Construction of the Chinese section will start in the first half of next year and is slated to be complete in 2018.

Chexpress - October 1, 2014

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 00:35:00 +0000

North America

Unit Sale

Dow Chemical Co. has started the process of selling its epoxy and chlorine businesses. The company has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc to manage the process. Combined, the epoxy and chlorine businesses have annual earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of close to $500 million.

Expansion

LyondellBasell is evaluating a further expansion project at its petrochemical plant in Channelview, Texas. The expansion would potentially add up to 550 million pounds/year of ethylene capacity. Preliminary engineering work is underway to assess expansion feasibility and if it proceeds, the project is expected to be completed in 2017. This expansion effort would be in addition to work already underway to install two large cracking furnaces at the site that are slated to increase production by 250 million pounds/year when construction is complete in early 2015.

Donation

General Electric Co. will give Penn State University up to $10 million to create a new center for natural gas industry research. The money will support research projects, equipment, and undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral fellowships at The Center for Collaborative Research on Intelligent Natural Gas Supply Systems. The new center will include faculty from the Smeal College of Business, Earth and Mineral Sciences, Engineering, and Information Sciences and Technology. The money will be donated over the next five years and earmarked for different uses. The company will also have engineers in residence to work with faculty and students.

World

Plastics Plant

Saudi International Petrochemical Co. (Sipchem) has started trial operations of a new plant in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia along with Hanwha Chemical. The plant has an annual production capacity of 1,000 tons of plastic moulds. The plant is estimated to have cost $29.3 million to build. Sipchem owns 75 percent of the joint venture – Saudi Specialty Products Co. – while Hanwha owns the remaining 25 percent.

Hydrocarbon Fluid Production

ExxonMobil Chemical is increasing production of its high performance hydrocarbon fluids by about 10 percent through expansion projects at its Singapore and Antwerp, Belgium facilities. The additional capacity will begin producing by mid-2015 and be complete in 2016. The expansion projects are in progress and build on other recently announced investment projects in the two facilities.
ExxonMobil to Boost Hydrocarbon Fluid Production at Antwerp, Singapore

Exit

Clorox is shutting down all operations in Venezuela, citing restrictions by the government, supply disruptions, and economic uncertainty as the reasons. Clorox said that for almost three years, its affiliate, Corporación Clorox de Venezuela S.A., had to sell more than two-thirds of its products at prices frozen by the Venezuelan government. During that same time span, there was a sharp rise in inflation that resulted in significantly higher costs for Clorox. After repeated meetings with government authorities, the company had expected significant price hikes would be allowed earlier this year. The price increases that were approved were nowhere near sufficient and Clorox said it would be forced to continue selling products at a loss. The company is now looking to sell its assets in Venezuela.

Acquisition

Siemens AG has reached a deal to acquire oilfield equipment maker Dresser-Rand for $7.6 billion. Dresser-Rand’s portfolio of compressors, steam, and gas turbines and engines complements Siemens’ existing offerings mainly in the global oil and gas and power generation businesses. Siemens will operate Dresser-Rand as its oil and gas business under the Dresser-Rand brand name and retain its executive team.

Chexpress - September 17, 2014

Wed, 17 Sep 2014 11:37:00 +0000

North America

Settlement

Occidental Chemical Corp. has agreed to pay New Jersey $190 million as part of a settlement to clean up the polluted Passaic River. The agreement is subject to approval by New Jersey Superior Court. Occidental Chemical bought a Newark factory once owned by Shamrock Chemicals Co., which dumped cancer-causing dioxin into the river during the manufacturing of the Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange. Several companies associated with the former Diamond Shamrock site were named in the lawsuit aimed at cleaning up the river, with Occidental being the last to settle.

Expansion

The Oilfield Technology Group (OTG) of Momentive Specialty Chemicals Inc. has expanded its triazine production plant in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The investment has increased raw and finished materials storage, modified the plant to provide increased capacity and redundancy, enabled flammable triazine production capability and dedication storage, and optimized truck loading for increased production flexibility and decreased loading times.

Fertilizer Plant

CHS Inc. will construct a fertilizer manufacturing plant in Spiritwood, North Dakota. The approximately $3 billion plant is intended to be fully operational in the first half of 2018. When complete, the plant will employ 160-180 people. The plant will produce more than 2,400 tons of ammonia daily, which will be further converted to urea, UAN and Diesel Exhaust Fuel (DEF). The majority of the nitrogen products from the plant will server farmer-owned cooperatives and independent farm supply retailers within a 200-mile radius of the plant.

Acquisition

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners has entered into a definitive agreement with Chevron Pipe Line Company to acquire Chevron Petrochemical Pipeline LLC, which owns the Evangeline ethylene pipeline system. The $295 million deal is subject to customary adjustments and closing conditions, but is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2014. After the acquisition, Evangeline will be operated by Boardwalk Louisiana Midstream (BLM), a subsidiary of Boardwalk. The Evangeline system is a 176-mile interstate pipeline capable of transporting approximately 2.6 billion pounds of ethylene per year between Port Neches, Texas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

World

Restart

Mitsui Chemicals Inc. has restarted its 612,000 ton/year naphtha cracker at its Ichihara, Japan plant. The restart followed repair work on an unspecified problem.

Petrochemical Project

PPT has joined with Saudi Aramco to submit a proposal to the Vietnamese government to build a $22 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in Vietnam. PPT and Aramco will each own 40 percent of the project with the Vietnamese government holding the remaining 20 percent. The project includes an olefins and aromatic petrochemical plant with a combined capacity of 5 million tons/year. It is expected to take six to seven years before the complex will be fully operational.

Expansion

PetroRabigh’s founding shareholders have formally invited banks to provide financing for the $8.5 billion expansion of its petrochemicals complex in Saudi Arabia. PetroRabigh is a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Sumitomo Chemical. The requests for proposals were issued to local and international banks, with financing of the expansion to be split between conventional loans and sharia-compliant facilities. The exists plant can produce 18 million tons of refined projects and 2.4 million tons of petrochemical products. The new facility – Rabigh II – is to be an expansion of the existing petrochemical plant, increasing output and introducing higher-margin products.

Chexpress - September 3, 2014

Thu, 04 Sep 2014 03:06:00 +0000

North America

PO/TBA Plant

LyondellBasell plans to build a propylene oxide (PO)/tertiary butyl alcohol (TBA) plant on the U.S. Gulf Coast with an annual capacity of 900 million pounds of PO and 2 billion pounds of TBA and its derivatives. The company expects to have the plant operational in 2019. The exact location of the plant has not been finalized.

Acquisition

NanoH20, a manufacturer of efficient and cost-effective reverse osmosis membranes for seawater desalination, has changed its operating name to LG NanoH20 Inc. The change follows the company’s recent acquisition by LG Chem, Ltd.

Chemical Complex

Sasol Ltd. has cleared a key permitting hurdle needed to begin construction on a $16-$21 billion complex near Lake Charles, Louisiana. The U.S. Army Corp of Engineers approved the company’s wetland modification permit to build gas-to-liquids and ethane cracker facilities. Construction for the ethane cracker is expected to begin this year, with operations beginning in 2017. In 2016, Sasol is expected to begin construction of a gas-to-liquids facility, which will convert natural gas into diesel fuel and other liquids with a capacity of 96,000 barrels/day, opening in 2019.

Product Testing Facility

Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals could spend $100 million to build a product testing facility and three buildings in Berkeley, California. A final decision on whether to move forward with the project won’t come until later this year. The potential 80,000-square-foot, three-story structure would shift testing of Bayer’s next-generation hemophilia A treatment there from the company’s main campus. Construction on the site could begin as soon as January and last two years.

World

Acquisition

3M has completed its acquisition through Sumitomo 3M Ltd. of Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd.’s 25 percent interest in Sumitomo 3M Ltd. for approximately $865 million. 3M is now the sole owner of the business, which will be known as 3M Japan Ltd.

Units Merge

Samsung Group will merge its shipbuilding and engineering units. Samsung Heavy Industries Co. will combine with Samsung Engineering Co. before the end of the year. A company spokesperson said this is the start of more restructuring that’s to be expected from the heavy-industry companies within the Samsung Group.

Petrochemical Complex

PPT Pcl is making a proposal to the Vietnamese government to build a $20 billion refinery and petrochemical complex. This proposal is revised down from an earlier project discussed two years ago. The complex has been designed to help meet Vietnam’s domestic demand for oil products and boost its exports. The $18.8 billion project now includes a 400,000 barrels/day refinery and olefins and aromatic petrochemical plants. The construction of the refinery is scheduled to be completed by 2021, with most of its products serving domestic demand in Vietnam. The petrochemical complex will have an annual production capacity of 2.9 million tons of olefins and 2 million tons of aromatic products, most of which will be exported.

Chexpress - August 20, 2014

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:57:00 +0000

North America

Ethane Cracker Project

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has been awarded a contract from ExxonMobil Chemical Company to provide engineering, procurement and construction services as part of a multi-billion dollar ethane cracker project in ExxonMobil’s Baytown, Texas complex and associated premium product facilities in Mont Belvieu, Texas. Jacobs is also working on the interconnectivity of the two sites.

Ethane

Navigator Holdings Ltd. has signed a long-term shipping agreement for one of its 35,000 cubic meter ethylene/ethane capable semi-refrigerated liquefied gas carriers currently being built in Jiangnan Shipyard, China. The ten-year time charter with Borealis is planned to commence in late 2016. The charter will transport ethane from the Marcus Hook terminal operated by Sunoco Logistics in the U.S. to Borealis’ cracker in Stenungsund, Sweden.

Petchem Business Unit

The Linde Group has added a petrochemical plant business unit to its Engineering Division offices in Houston, Texas. The new regional business unit will serve petrochemical customers on a wide range of projects, from consulting and technical support, revamp and expansion studies to EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) execution of mid-size projects. In addition, it will play a role in the project execution of mega projects.

World

Fertilizer Plant

Mitsubishi Corp. and Gap Insaat have laid the foundation of a $1.3 billion plant to produce carbamide in Turkmenistan. The country plans to gain added value by using its natural gas to produce the fertilizer for export. The new plant will process natural gas to produce 1.1 million tons of carbamide (also known as urea) annually. It will employ 1,000 workers and be built near the Garabogaz Bay in the Caspian Sea.

Pipeline Stopped

Colombia’s Bicentenario crude oil pipeline has been shut down after being damaged in a bombing blamed on leftist rebels. The attack caused a huge fire, but no injuries or fatalities. The 230-kilometer pipeline has the capacity to transport 110,000 barrels/day from the Eastern Plains to the Cano Limon-Covenas pipeline. The pipeline was ruptured, oil was spilled and there was a fire.

Lower Output/h2_header]

Neste Oil has been forced to lower output at its refinery in Porvoo, Finland due to damage at the site’s hydrogen plant. Unit repair could take several weeks. The company said that the incident was not expected to harm deliveries that already have contracts.

Chexpress - August 6, 2014

Wed, 06 Aug 2014 12:06:00 +0000

North America

Outage

Dow Chemical Co. could lose more than 200 million pounds of ethylene production as a result of an unplanned outage at its plant in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada. The affected ethylene unit went offline on July 22 and back online at low operating rates on August 4. Necessary repairs are being made to bring the operating rates back to full production as quickly as possible.

Investment

Renewable Energy Group plans to spend $15 million in the next 12 months on the company’s Geismar facility, which makes diesel from animal fat. Part of the planned spending will go to make long-term improvements that will allow the plant to use a broader mix of feedstocks. The biofuels plant hasn’t operated since October 2012, and the company has not provided a date for its expected restart. The plant has been renamed REG Geismar.

Asbestos Claims

RPM International plans to spend nearly $800 million as part of a preliminary deal to fund a trust that resolves asbestos personal injury claims tied to a business owned by its Specialty Products Holding Corp. The agreement still needs the approval of the claimants as well as the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

World

Export

Gunvor Group will start exporting gasoline from its oil terminal in Ust-Luga, Russia. Initial August exports will total around 80,000 tons of gasoline from Surgutneftegaz’s 420,000 barrel/day Kirishi refinery.

Investment

General Electric Co. plans to invest $2 billion in Africa by 2018 to boost infrastructure, worker skills and access to energy. The company’s investments include deals to work on increased electric grid reliability during peak power demands in Algeria and to generate uninterrupted power for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp’s state oil refinery. GE also extended for five years a “country-to-company” agreement with Nigeria for the development of infrastructure projects, the transfer of skills and technology, and a $1 billion investment in railway and power equipment in Angola.

LNG Project/h2_header]

Inpex Corporation has completed its Ichthys LNG Project’s dredging program in Darwin Harbour, Australia. The program started in 2012 and involved the safe dredging and disposal of more than 565 cubic million feet of rock and sand from the harbor to create a deep shipping channel and berthing area for large liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and condensate carriers servicing LNG processing facilities at Bladin Point.

Chexpress - July 23, 2014

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 12:34:00 +0000

North America

Cogeneration power plant

Mexichem expects to start operating a $650 million cogeneration power plant for Pemex in the first half of 2018. Mexichem won a contract for the Cogeneration Cactus plant in partnership with Enesa Energia. The plant will have preliminary capacity to generate 530 megawatts of power.

Methanol manufacturing facility

Yuhuang Chemical Inc. is opening a methanol manufacturing facility in Louisiana. The $1.85 billion project represents the first major foreign direct investment by a Chinese company in Louisiana. The first phase of construction will begin in 2016, with operations starting by 2018. After the first plant is completed, a second methanol plant will be built to reach an annual capacity of 3 million metric tons of methanol. A third phase will include a methanol derivatives plant that will produce intermediate chemicals.

Acquisition

Albemarle is buying Rockwood Holdings Inc. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $6.2 billion. The boards of both companies have approved the deal, which is targeted to close in the first quarter of 2015. It still needs shareholder approval. The combined company would operate under the Albemarle name.

World

Contract

CB&I has been awarded additional contracts by Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) for the Liwa Plastics Projet in Oman. CB&I’s scope of work includes the license and engineering design of three units in addition to the previous award for its ethylene technology and front end engineering and design (FEED) services. CB&I will provide the technology for a new 90,000 metric ton/year high conversion MTBE unit, the technology for a 41,000 metric ton/year butane-1 recovery unit, and the gas processing technology for a new 18 million standard cubic meter/day natural gas liquids extraction plant.

Acquisition

CCP Composites and Polynt Group are planning to combine to create an integrated composite resins producer that will rank number one in Europe and number three globally. Polynt Group has made a firm offer for CCP Composites, which will be presented to the employee representatives concerned as part of the required information and consultation processes. Polynt Group’s offer includes clear undertakings to continue operations sustainably and safeguard existing jobs and employee benefits. The proposed transaction is subject to approval by the relevant antitrust authorities.

Fumes

Fumes from a chemical leak on a ship at the Laem Chabang industrial seaport in Thailand have sickened 139 people, including schoolchildren. Those exposed to the fumes had difficulty breathing, nausea and headaches, and were treated at hospitals. The hazardous flammable liquids leaked when a container fell onto the liquid tank on the Hong Kong ship that was anchored in the port.

Joint venture

Halliburton is entering its first joint venture in China with an affiliate of SPT Energy Group. The venture will focus on hydraulic fracturing and production enhancement services in Xinjiang, China. The companies have worked together for seven years.

Chexpress - July 9, 2014

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 12:47:00 +0000

North America

Acquisition

Renewable Energy Group has completed the acquisition of Dynamic Fuels, Inc., one of the first renewable diesel biorefineries in the U.S. The Dynamic Fuels facility in Geismar, Louisiana has a 75 million gallon annual production capacity. This was part of a two-part deal. First, Renewable Energy Group acquired most of the assets of Syntroleum Corporation, which included a 50 percent ownership interest in Dynamic Fuels. Shortly after this acquisition in early June, Renewable Energy Group paid $18 million in cash to Tyson Foods for the remaining 50 percent interest.

Capacity

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has received Board of Directors approval and obtained the necessary environmental permit from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality (TCEQ) to expand normal alpha olefins (NAO) production capacity at its Cedar Bayou plant in Baytown, Texas. This investment will provide an additional 100,000 metric tons/year of capacity. Construction is expected to be completed in July 2015.

Production issue

Oxea Corporation has encountered a significant production issue at its Bay City, Texas facility. Due to a malfunction in the production process, the company has been unable to resume full production. As a result, Oxea made a declaration of force majeure, effective for a number of the company’s products (n/I Butanol, n/I Butyl Acetate, n-Propanol and n-Propyl Acetate). Customer orders are being carefully monitored in an attempt to keep delays to a minimum.

World

Gas study

Sasol is considering a gas-to-liquids plant in Mozambique with Eni SpA and Mozambique’s oil company. The joint pre-feasibility study will assess the viability of such a plant in the region. Eni has found about 75 trillion cubic feet of gas offshore Mozambique in Area 4 of the Rovuma Basin. It is too early to determine how long the study will take or the cost of such a plant.

New facility

Afton Chemical Corporation will expand its global supply network with the addition of a new chemical additive manufacturing facility on Jurong Isalnd, Singapore. The plant will start to produce components in January 2016 to support the next generation of additive solutions. Foster Wheeler Singapore will manage the engineering and construction.

MDI plant

BASF, Huntsman, Shanghai Hua Yi (Group) Company, Shanghai Chlor-Alkali Chemical Co. Ltd. and SINOPEC Group Assets Management Corporation have kicked off the construction of a new plant in Caojing, China. The plant will have an annual production capacity of 240,000 metric tons of crude MDI (diphenylmethane diisocyanate). In addition, the partners plan to build a HCl (hydrogen chloride) recycling plant for the production of chlorine. The facility is expected to start up in 2017. The project is subject to further approvals by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

IChemE accreditation

PETRONAS has become the first organization in Malaysia to receive accreditation for its company training scheme by the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). The company currently employs more than 30,000 employees globally, including 3,500 chemical engineers. It plans to grow rapidly over the next few years and expects it will need additional chemical engineers to support is expansion.

Funding

Saudi Arabian Mining Co. (Ma’aden) has signed a $5 billion financing deal with commercial banks and a state-owned investment fund to back its $7.5 billion phosphate production project in Waad al-Shimal, Saudi Arabia. The project is a joint venture between Ma’aden, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and Mosaic. The loan agreement will last for 16.5 years and repayments will be made on a semi-annual basis from Dec. 31, 2018. The scheme will have a production capacity of 16 million tons/year of phosphate concentrate, sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid, as well as plants to produce calcium monophosphate and calcium diphosphate. Phosphate production is expected to start in late 2016.

Chexpress - June 25, 2014

Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:02:00 +0000

North America

Polyethylene units

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has had its second groundbreaking for its U.S. Gulf Coast Petrochemicals Project in Old Ocean, Texas. The construction includes two polyethylene units that will each produce 500,000 metric tons of plastic resin annually. The resin will be used for a variety of products, including new flexible packaging options that extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables, as well as the creation of plastic piping, merchandise bags and bottles. In addition to constructing the production facilities, 45 miles of railroad track will be installed to hold and transport the output of these units.

HDPE plant

INEOS Olefins & Polymers USA and Sasol Chemicals North America LLC have reached a final investment decision to form a joint venture to build a high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plant in LaPorte, Texas. The 50/50 joint venture will produce 470 kilotons per year of bimodal HDP using technology licensed from INEOS Technologies. The ethylene required for the production of the HDPE will be supplied by INEOS and Sasol in proportion to their respective ownership positions. Plant start-up is expected in 2016.

Facility opens

Entegris Inc. has opened its new i2M Center for Advanced Materials Science in Bedford, Massachusetts. The $55 million facility will serve as the main innovation center for developing filtration and specialty coating technologies used to improve yields in microelectronics manufacturing environments.

World

Specialty esters plant

Oxea’s specialty esters plant in Nanjing, China is now complete and ready for commissioning and start-up. The plant will complement the company’s three existing specialty esters plants in Europe and will boost its global production capacity for specialty esters by 40 percent.

Fire

An explosion caused a fire at Caligen Europe’s plastics factory in Breda, The Netherlands. The flames were quickly extinguished and no one was hurt. The blast was in a machine used to make foam.

Oil refinery project

Two consortia from Russia and South Korea have emerged as the final bidders for Uganda’s $2.5 billion refinery after two others from China and Japan were knocked out of the bidding process. The Ministry of Energy said that a consortium led by South Korea’s SK Energy Co. and another led by Russia’s RT-Global Resources have been selected to proceed to the final phase of the bidding process. A bid from China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau did not adequately satisfy all the requirements of tender and a bid from Marubeni Corporation was not evaluated because it lacked a bid bond. The final winner is expected to take up a 60 percent stake in the project as well as develop and operate it. A final winner should be announced by the end of the fourth quarter this year. The facility is planned to process 60,000 bpd. Oil production is expected to begin in 2017 with maximum output expected to be 200,000 barrels.

Chexpress - June 11, 2014

Wed, 11 Jun 2014 23:13:00 +0000

North America

More time requested

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has asked for more time to review a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plant project planned for a site on a bay near Washington, D.C. The EPA requested the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) grant a 30-day extension to conduct a review of Dominion Resources Inc’s Cove Point liquefaction project in Maryland. FERC had given the Cove Point project the green light last month and has not provided a comment on the extension request.

Acquisition

Phillips 66 is buying a 7.1 million-barrel storage terminal near Beaumont, Texas as part of the company’s plan to increase its logistics and transportation assets. The Chevron Corp. terminal is nearly 60 miles from Phillips’ nearest refinery. Phillips 66 has said the terminal will serve its own refineries as well as others in the U.S. The terminal has two marine docks capable of handling 750,000-barrel oil tankers, one barge dock, and rail and truck loading and unloading infrastructure. It has a storage capacity of 4.7 million barrels for crude and 2.4 million barrels for refined products. The sale is expected to close in the third quarter, pending regulatory approvals.

Acquisitions

Renewable Energy Group’s wholly owned subsidiary REG Synthetic Fuels, LLC has completed its acquisition of the remaining 50 percent ownership interest in Dynamic Fuels, LLC, which was previously owned by Tyson Foods. The new biodiesel facility will be known as REG Geismar, LLC and is a 75-million gallon renewable biorefinery in Geismar, Louisiana.

World

Fire

A fire at Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s plant in Moerdijk, The Netherlands has been extinguished. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. Two workers were treated for minor burns. The plant manufactures chemicals from petroleum that are used in products ranging from car components to synthetic fibers and insulation materials. Flames and large plumes of smoke could be seen from about 18 miles away.

Fire

Reliance Industries Ltd. had a minor fire break out at its poly butadiene rubber plant in Vadodara, India. The fire should not have any impact on production. No injuries were reported and the fire was brought under control by fire fighters at the plant. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Joint venture

Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) has entered into a $595 million 50-50 joint venture agreement with SK Global Chemical to produce polyethylene products. The venture will operate a plant recently completed by SK in Ulsan, South Korea. The plant has an expected annual capacity of 230,000 tons. A second plant is planned for Saudi Arabia and the intent is to have production facilities established worldwide over time. The joint venture will be based in Singapore.

Chexpress - May 28, 2014

Wed, 28 May 2014 11:46:00 +0000

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.

Chexpress - May 14, 2014

Wed, 14 May 2014 15:05:14 +0000

North America

Acquisition

Koch Agronomic Services, an affiliate of Koch Fertilizer LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Ag & Energy Solutions LLC, plans to buy the Turf and Ornamental assets, brands and technologies of Agrium Advanced Technologies. Agrium Inc. is discontinuing operations of the Agrium Advanced Technologies business unit. The deal would mean a new production facility for Koch Agronomic Services in Sylacauga, Alabama. Deal terms were not disclosed, but it is expected to close at the end of the second quarter of 2014.

Acquisition

ShawCor Ltd. plans to acquired Desert NDT LLC in a deal valued at $260 million. The deal for Desert, which provides non-destructive testing services for new oil and gas gathering pipelines and infrastructure integrity management services, is expected to close in the third quarter, subject to regulatory approvals.

LNG production facility

North Dakota LNG, LLC, the newest member of Prairie Companies LLC’s portfolio of oil and gas businesses, will launch a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) production facility in Tioga, North Dakota. The plant will be the first-to-market in the state to produce 10,000 gallons/day starting in summer 2014. A phase two facility is scheduled to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2014 and capable of producing 66,000 gallons/day.

World

Financing received

Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) has received a $2.8 billion loan for projects, including the Sohar Refinery Improvement project (SRIP), which will be 65 percent debt financed. SRIP is a brownfield project and represents a significant technical improvement to the existing refinery, which will further enhance its capabilities to cope with changes in the quality of the Omani crude and reach international levels with environmental improvements, competitiveness and profitability.

Supply agreement

The Linde Group has signed an agreement to build a new hydrogen production unit for Neste Oil. Under the long-term on-site hydrogen supply agreement, Linde will build a new hydrogen production unit for Neste Oil’s Porvoo refinery near Helsinki, Finland. The project will be a total investment of about €100 million. Linde’s Engineering division will construct the turn-key plant. Linde’s North Eruopean subsidiary AGA will be responsible for the new unit’s operation, which is scheduled to come on stream in 2016 as part of the agreement.

Technology

UOP LLC’s technologies have been selected to produce key ingredients for fuels and synthetic rubber in China. China’s Lijin Petrochemical Plant Co., Ltd. will use Honeywell’s UOP C4 Oleflex process to produce isobutylene. Lijin Petrochemical will also use Honeywell’s UOP Butamer process, which converts normal butane into isobutene to increase feedstock flexibility for the UOP Oleflex process. The new unit is expected to start up in 2015 and produce 170,000 metric tons/year of isobutylene.

Chexpress - April 30, 2014

Thu, 01 May 2014 00:21:00 +0000

North America

Ethylene plant

Shintech Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd., has applied for a permit to build a grassroots ethylene plant in Louisiana. The company intends to build the 500,000 tons/year capacity plant on industrial land that it already owns. Concurrently with this project, Shintech will continue its feasibility study on the amount to be invested for the proposed plant construction, the profitability of the project, and the amount of time that it will take for construction to be completed.

Pipe expansion

Williams Partners LP plans to expand part of its Transco pipeline to deliver natural gas to Cheniere Energy Partners LP’s Sabine liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility under construction in Louisiana. Williams Partners said the project will cost about $300 million and it is planned to be in service in early 2017, subject to government approvals. Sabine is the only LNG export facility under construction in the U.S. and it is expected to be in service in late 2015.

Refinery upgrade

Marathon Petroleum Corporation is taking the next step toward a potential $2.2 billion to $2.5 billion upgrade to its Garyville, Louisiana refinery. The company plans to file permit applications with Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality at the end of April. It plans to complete feasibility studies to make a final decision on the project by early 2015. If approved, the project would result in hydrotreating, hydrocracking and desulfurization equipment installations, along with additional infrastructure, including buildings, tanks, cooling towers, and rail and electrical facilities.

World

Bids to lease storage

Petronet LNG has invited bids to lease storage at its Kochi regasification plant in Southern India due to a lack of pipelines connecting its key demand centers. Petronet is currently operating its 5 million tons/year Kochi plant at a fraction of its capacity as land-related issues have delayed the two pipelines that would link the terminal with customers in Bangalore and Mangalore. The Kochi terminal has two LNG storage tanks of nearly 182,000 cubic meters capacity each.

Petrochemical facilities

Iran plans to launch four new petrochemical plants in the current Iranian year calendar (which started March 21). The second phase of the Kavian Petrochemical Complex in Bushehr as well as the Lorestan, Kordestand and Mahabad complexes are scheduled to be operational by the end of the current Iranian calendar year.

Leak

An oil pipe leak caused excessive levels of benzene to arise in Lanzhou, China’s water supply. This prompted warnings against drinking from the tap and sending residents to buy bottled water. A crude oil pipeline run by China National Petroleum Corp. had a leak that tainted the source water feeding a local water plant.

Chexpress - April 16, 2014

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 11:39:00 +0000

North America

Ethane cracker

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has broken ground on its U.S. Gulf Coast Petrochemicals Project at its Cedar Bayou plant in Baytown, Texas. The project includes a 1.5 million metric tons/year ethane cracker in Baytown and two 500,000 metric tons/year capacity polypropylene facilities in Old Ocean, Texas. The estimated completion date for the project is in 2017.

New technologies

Statoil ASA is testing and aims to deploy up to 14 new technologies in the next five to ten years. The technologies are designed to reduce energy and water use when producing a barrel of bitumen from the company’s Canadian oil sands operations. The technologies have been included in plans for Statoil’s Comer Project in Alberta.

Agreement

The Linde Group has entered into an Enterprise Framework Agreement (EFA) with Shell Global Solutions International B.V. to build ethane cracking units globally. The EFA is for ten years with an option to be extended. The EFA covers the licensing, engineering, procurement and construction services, as well as the supply of proprietary equipment for ethane cracking units.

World

Investment

Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd and BASF Nederland BV have agreed to invest $462.82 million in an aroma ingredients complex in Pahang, Malaysia. The board of BASF Petronas Chemicals Sdn Bhd, a joint venture between BASF and Petronas Chemicals, approved the final investment decision. The first plant will come on stream in 2016.

Refinery and petrochemical project

Petroliam Nasional (Petronas) is proceeding with a $16 billion refinery and petrochemical integrated development called Rapid. Located in the Pengerang Integrated Complex in Johor, Malaysia, Rapid is scheduled to start refinery operations by early 2019. Other facilities in the complex will involve up to $11 billion of investment.

Contract

CB&I has been awarded a contract in excess of $40 million by Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic) to provide ethylene technology and front end engineering and design (FEED) services for the Liva Plastics Project in Oman. CB&I’s scope includes FEED services for a 800,000 tons/year ethylene plant, pygas unit, MTBE and butane-1 unit, two polymer plants, a gas plant and pipeline, as well as the related off-sites and utilities.

Chexpress - April 2, 2014

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:38:23 +0000

North America

Expansion

3M is expanding its residential water business and will soon have hundreds of dealers selling 3M-branded water softeners and kitchen-sink filters to households around the United States. So far, 3M’s residential water division has contracted with 35 full-service dealers to spread the word about its products and compete with Culligan, Pentair and other water-filtration companies. The plan calls for 3M to brand its home equipment for the first time and for nearly 1,200 3M-labeled trucks to circulate neighborhoods by 2017.

Acquisition

Clean water startup NanoH20 is being acquired by LG Chem for $200 million. NanoH20 makes technology that can clean water, particularly seawater, with low amounts of energy. NanoH20 has developed nanotechnology-enabled reverse-osmosis membranes for desalinating water that are supposed to be more production and use less energy than traditional desalination membranes. NanoH20’s membranes are engineered to be more permeable than standard ones.

Split

FMC Corporation will split into two publically traded companies. The plan is to split the agricultural and nutrition segments off from the company’s industrial minerals divisions. The first company – “New FMC” – will consist of the Agricultural Solutions and Health and Nutrition segments, including EPAX, which FMC acquired for $345 million in 2013. In addition to EPAX omega-3s expertise, New FMC will also have considerable expertise in marine-soured ingredients. The second company – “FMC Minerals” – will consist of the company’s current industrial minerals segment. Both companies are expected to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

World

Expansion

Colombia’s 80,000 barrel-day single crude distillation unit at the Cartagena refinery has been stopped to undergo a planned expansion at the facility that will double its capacity by 2015. The cracking unit was previously stopped last year as part of the same expansion project, which will cost $6 billion. The effort is part of a broader push by Ecopetrol to lift refinery capacity to replace imports while also boosting exports.

Expansion

Petroperu will sign a contract in April to start work on a $3.5 billion refinery expansion with Tecnicas Reunidas. The project is aimed at increasing output at the Talara refinery by 50 percent to around 96,000 barrels/day. Boosting capacity at this facility is central to President Ollanta Humala’s goal of transforming Petroperu into a bigger regional energy player. Upgrades are scheduled to begin this year and end in 2017.

Contract

Petrovietnam Gas Corp., a subsidiary of Petrovietnam, has signed a contract to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from a Singapore-based subsidiary of Gazprom. No details on pricing or volume were released. Gazprom’s LNG will be delivered to PV Gas’ LNG terminal in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, which has an annual capacity of 1 million tons and will become operational in 2017.

Chexpress - March 19, 2014

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 12:25:33 +0000

North America

Expansion

Agrium Inc’s board of directors has approved an expansion of the company’s nitrogen facility in Borger, Texas. The $720 million project will add 610,000 tons of urea and 145,000 tons of ammonia production capacity. The expansion work will begin in March and is scheduled for completion in the second half of 2015. While expansion work is underway, the facility is expected to operate at its normal production rates.

Contract

CB&I was awarded a $100 million contract by CF Industries. As a result of the contract, CB&I will perform construction and component fabrication for CF Industries’ new urea ammonia nitrate and nitric acid units, offsites and utilities at its complex in Donaldsonville, Louisiana.

Acquisition

Intrexon Corporation has acquired laboratory operations in Budapest, Hungary from Codexis, Inc. The acquisition will expand Intrexon’s strain and protein development capabilities, enabling it to better service the European and Asian Markets. Intrexon’s Industrial Productions Division (IPD) will absorb the Budapest laboratory staff, integrating with Intrexon’s synthetic biology technologies and capabilities, allowing Intrexon to better serve current collaborations and attract new opportunities for active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and industrial and consumer production collaborations.

World

Plants

ExxonMobil Chemical will build facilities to make a premium halobutyl rubber and Escorez hydrogenated hydrocarbon resin at its recently expanded petrochemical complex in Singapore. Engineering and procurement activities have started, with construction expected to begin in the second half of 2014. Completion is anticipated in 2017. This expansion will add 140,000 tons/year of halobutyl rubber production capacity.

Investment

S-Oil Corp will invest $7.49 billion to build heavy oil upgrading and petrochemical production units. S-Oil is expanding its heavy oil upgrading unit to raise gasoline production by nearly 50 percent up to 218.000 barrels/day. The company will build a 45,000 barrels/day atmospheric residue desulphurization unit and an up to 70,000 barrels/day residue fluid catalytic cracker (RFCC).

Fire

Lukoil’s petrochemical plant in Budyonnovsk, Russia experienced a fire recently. The fire wounded some. The fire broke out after a loss of pressure in the ethylene section of the plant. Company spokespeople declined to comment.

Chexpress - February 19, 2014

Wed, 19 Feb 2014 13:52:00 +0000

North America

Ethane

INEOS Europe AG has announced a new ethane purchase agreement with CONSOL Energy in the USA. Ethane will be transported through the Mariner East infrastructure and imported by sea for use in INEOS’ European cracker complexes. Supplies will start in 2015.

Thermal Plant

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System sprawls across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border. The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units is owned by NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy. It can produce nearly 400 megawatts of power.

Purchase

Phillips 66 Partners LP will buy a 681-mile refined products pipeline system and two refinery-grade propylene storage systems from Phillips 66 for $700 million. Phillips 66 Partners will now operate the 132,000 barrels/day Gold Line System that runs from a Phillips 66-operated refinery in Borger, Texas to Cahokia, Illinois. The storage systems in Medford, Oklahoma have a total working capacity of 70,000 barrels and are scheduled to start operating on March 1.

World

Postponement

Peru has pushed back the date it will announce the winner of the rights to build a $2.5 billion natural gas pipeline. The date has been pushed from Feb. 17 to June 30. The concession date has been changed twice since initially being scheduled for Oct. 7 of last year.

Refinery

PetroChina’s newly started $6 billion greenfield and petrochemical complex in Pengzhou is expected to start commercial operations by early April. The PetroChina plant is designed to process Kazakh, Russian oil as well as PetroChina’s own crude from the Xinjiang region. Crude will be piped from neighboring Kazakhstan via a trunk pipeline started in 2006. The refinery is integrated with a petrochemical complex, including an 800,000 ton/year ethylene unit, which makes feedstock for plastics and textiles.

Cracking Furnace Project

Technip was awarded a contract by Open Joint Stock Company to provide technology and services for a grassroots furnace at Kazan, Russia. The project consists of the engineering and procurement of an SMK double-cell cracking furnace. The project follows the successful start-up and operations of a Technip SMK double-cell cracking furnace supplied in 2007. The furnaces are part of the ethylene plant at the seat, with the output used as feedstock for other downstream units. Technip’s operating center in Zoetermeer, The Netherlands will execute the project, which is scheduled for mechanical completion in 2015.

Software Upgrade

ProSim has released a new version of its Simulis Thermodynamics software. This new version is compatible with 64-bit applications for thermodynamic calculations. Simulis Thermodynamics 2.0 also includes a pure-compound physical properties prediction tool for molecules.

Chexpress - February 5, 2014

Wed, 05 Feb 2014 00:33:00 +0000

North America

Acquisition

Gerdau Ameristeel has entered into an agreement with Ameron International, Tokyo Steel and Mitsui & Co. to acquire all the issued and oustandig shares of TAMCO. TAMCO is a mini-mill steel producer of reinforcing steel bar and is one of the largest rebar mills in the western U.S. with an annual capacity of approximately 500,000 tons. The purchase price is approximately $165 million in cash and the deal is expected to close this quarter. With its divestiture of 50 percent of TAMCO, Ameron International will focus on its core pipe systems business involved in the transmission of water and corrosive fluids and gases.

Research

Monsanto Co. is opening a wheat-breeding research center in Great Falls, Montana. The company is offering assurances that the facility will involve conventional research and not genetically modified organisms. The aim of the research will be to come up with better varieties that product better yield and products. Seed varieties will be developed at the company’s Wheat Technology Center in Twin Falls, Idaho, by cross-breeding different types of seeds. The resulting seeds will be grown in test plots north of Great Falls to study how well the varieties grow in various soils and environments to assess if they are commercially viable.

Stake

Hedge fund Third Point LLC has acquired a significant stake in Dow Chemical and wants the company to spin off its petrochemicals division. Third Point says Dow is now its biggest investment, but didn’t specify how many shares it had acquired other than to say it was a significant position.

World

Bids

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) says 14 private sector companies submitted bids to destroy chemicals removed from Syria as part of international efforts to dismantle Damascus’ poison gas and nerve agent program. The companies were from a number of countries including the United States, Britain, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia. The companies submitted tenders to destroy 500 metric tons of chemicals and waste material resulting from the destruction of other Syrian chemicals. The chemicals to be destroyed by the private companies are regularly used in the pharmaceutical and other industries and can be safely disposed of at civilian facilities. The OPCW is conducting technical and commercial evaluations of the bids before announcing which companies will be awarded contracts.

Stake

Repsol has agreed to sell its 10 percent stake in the Transporta dora de Gas del Peru gas pipeline in to Engas SA for $219 million. The deal will be completed in the coming months. TGP transports natural gas and liquids from Camisea fields inland to the Peru LNG liquefaction plant in Pampa Melchorita.

Overcapacity

PetroChina has put off starting up two new refineries and delayed expansion of another to counter the threat of overcapacity as oil demand growth slows in China. China’s oil consumption last year grew at its slowest in more than 20 years as soft economic growth sliced demand for transportation and industrial fuels such as diesel. The company will now start up its 200,000 barrels/day Kunming refinery in the Yunnan province in 2016, two years behind the original schedule. Operation of a 400,000 barrels/day joint venture refinery in Jieyang of Guangdong province will be delayed to 2017 versus the original plan of 2013. The company will also delay expansion of its Huabei refinery in north China to 2015 from this year.

Ultra-low Sulfur

Exxon Mobil Corp’s new hydrotreater has started operations and is producing ultra-low sulfur diesel at the company’s 592,000 barrels/day Singapore refinery. The new unit will increase the facility’s daily low-sulfur diesel capacity to 25 million liters or about 157,000 barrels. About 36 percent of that, or 57,000 barrels/day, will meet ultra-low sulfur diesel specifications. With the new unit, the refinery is able to product both 50 and 10 parts per million low sulfur diesel.

Chexpress - January 22, 2014

Thu, 23 Jan 2014 00:03:51 +0000

North America

Facility opening

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has opened a new manufacturing facility in Manatee County, Florida. The facility has created 250 new jobs and is injecting $56.8 million of capital investment into the community. The new facility will be used to manufacture large custom-made chemical process equipment for overseas customers. Air Products will benefit from this location and its close proximity to Port Manatee.

Acquisition

International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) has acquired Aromor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but analysts estimate that the company was sold for $88 million. Aromor was privately held, half-owned by Kibbutz Givat Oz in the Lower Galilee, Israel. Most of Aromor’s products are kosher and most are exported to Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America. The company’s factory will remain at its present location and all of the company’s 85 employees are expected to remain on the job. Prior to the acquisition, Aromor was a supplier to IFF.

Plant revamp

Pemex will spend up to $475 million to buy and revamp a fertilizer production plant in Cosoleacaque, Veracruz, Mexico. This investment will allow the company to produce up to 990,000 tons of urea annually. The deal between Pemex subsidiary PMI and Minera del Norte subsidiary Agro Nitrogenados would allow the company to supply 75 percent of Mexico’s demand for urea. Pemex plans to replace more than $400 million worth of annual imports of urea, which is widely used in fertilizer as a source of nitrogen. Ammonia, a main input in fertilizer production, will be supplied by Pemex’s petrochemical complex located 28 kilometers from the Agro Nitrogenados plant.

Air permit

South Louisiana Methanol LP (SLM) has received the required air permit from the LDEQ and the State of Louisiana to construct and operate its methanol facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana. With the air permit now in place, SLM is on track to begin construction during the second half of 2014, with facility commissioning projected for January 2017.

World

Job cuts

Sasol Ltd. may cut as many as 1,000 jobs as the company prepares for a reorganization. The company employs more than 35,000 people in 37 countries. Talks with the union started in late November after Sasol and Bain & Co. developed proposals to reduce the company’s size. Sasol plans to save $279 million from cost cuts within the next two to three years. The company anticipates that for at least the next six months, the impacts will be limited to senior management.

Takeover offer

Bayer’s planned acquisition of Algeta ASA has entered its next phase. Aviator Acquisition AS, a subsidiary established by Bayer Nordic SE, Espoo, Finland, commenced a public takeover offer for all the shares of Algeta at the price of NOK 362/share in cash. The total value of the transaction is approximately NOK 17.6 billion (EUR 2.1 billion). Bayer issued the takeover offer on the basis of a transaction agreement signed with Algeta on Dec. 19, 2103. Algeta’s Board of Directors unanimously recommended that its shareholders accept the offer. The completion of the offer is subject to customary closing conditions.

Expansion

Formosa Plastics Group will invest $13.25 billion in overseas expansion this year. This is the Taiwanese company’s biggest annual capital budget in five years. The group plans to expand in China and Vietnam as well as build a petrochemical project in Texas.

Biofuels

Boeing Co., Etihad Airways, Total, Takreer (a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.) and the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology say they will work together on a program to develop an aviation biofuel industry in the United Arab Emirates. The program will involve research and development and investments in production of fuels derived from plants that can power aircraft.

Chexpress - January 8, 2014

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:36:00 +0000

North America

Purchase

Ergon Inc. has purchased Bunge North America Inc’s stake in the Ergon Biofuels plant in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Ergon purchased Bunge’s share of what had been a 2007 joint venture of a 54 million gallon/year ethanol plant, the only facility that produced corn-based ethanol in the state. Financial terms were not disclosed. A company spokesperson said the transaction allows them to look at alternative feedstocks as well as how the plant may be used for other products.

Acquisition

Ergon-Texas Pipeline, Inc. has acquired the Thompsons pipeline and associated assets from Blueknight Energy Partners, LP. The 42-mile pipeline originates in Thompsons, Texas and terminates in Webster, Texas. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Ethylene Cracker

Axiall has selected the state of Louisiana as the location of a possible ethylene cracker to be built in conjunction with a related derivatives plant. The company is proposing to construct the facility with a to-be-named partner. The company anticipates it will make a $1 billion capital investment for the project. Axiall is set to begin the permitting process and certain front-end engineering design activities as the next steps to select a final site for the project. If the project moves forward, commercial operation could begin in 2018.

Chlor-Alkali Plant

Westlake Chemical Corporation has started up its new chlor-alkali plant at its vinyls manufacturing complex in Geismar, Louisiana. The plant has the capacity to produce 350,000 electrochemical units (ECUs) annually and uses state-of-the-art membrane technology. The plant is adjacent to the complex’s existing vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) facilities.

World

Coal-to-Chemical Plant

Sinopec Engineering Group has entered into an agreement to build a $3.1 billion plant in northern China to turn coal into petrochemicals. Sinopec Engineering will be responsible for the engineering, procurement and construction of the plant. The plant would produce 3.6 million tons/year of olefins, mostly ethylene. Key facilities of the investment include a 3.6 million tons/year synthetic methanol unit, two 1.8 million tons/year methanol to olefin units and two polypropylene units. Sinopec Engineering will hand over the project to Zhong Tian He Chuang Co. Ltd., a joint venture which has Sinopec Corp. and China Coal Energy Company among its main investors, by Oct. 30, 2015.

Phosphate Project

Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma’aden) has commitments from banks for financing worth up to $4.2 billion for a $7 billion phosphate project in Saudi Arabia. The project in Waad-al-Shimal is a joint venture between Ma’aden, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. and Mosaic. It is part of the Saudi state efforts to create a stronger industrial base beyond oil refining and export. The rest of the funding should come from the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF) as well as some export credit agencies (ECA). The project will have a production capacity of 16 million tons/year of phosphate concentrate, sulphuric acid, phosphoric acid, as well as plants to produce calcium monophosphate and calcium diphosphate. Phosphate production is expected to start in late 2016.

Stake Purchased

EPH has bought E.ON’s 40 percent stake in gas storage company Nafta. SPP is Nafta’s main shareholder with a 56 percent stake. EPH also holds a 49 percent share in SPP. Nafta has natural gas storage capacity of 2.3 billion cubic meters.

Chexpress - December 10, 2013

Wed, 11 Dec 2013 05:42:46 +0000

North America

Sale

Carlyle Group LP is preparing an initial public offering or sale of PQ Corp that could value the specialty chemical company at up to $3 billion, including debt. The private equity firm, which bought PQ for $1.5 billion in 2007, plans to talk to investment banks to choose underwriters for the proposed offering. Carlyle will also explore a sale of PQ to another firm.

Contract won

CB&I has been awarded a contract valued at approximately $1 billion by Ingleside Ethylene LLC, a joint venture between Occidental Chemical Corporation (OxyChem) and Mexichem S.A.B. de C.V., for the engineering, procurement and construction of an ethane cracker and associated utilities and offsites to be located at OxyChem’s complex in Ingleside, Texas. The cracker will have the capacity to produce approximately 1.2 billion pounds/year of ethylene from a feedstock that is anticipated to be ethane derived from domestic shale gas. CB&I had previously provided the technology license and basic engineering for the ethylene technology, five short residence time (SRT) cracking heaters and the front end engineering and design (FEED) services.

Sale

Dow Chemical Co. will sell a bulk of its chlorine operations – its oldest business – as part of its plan to sell or spin off commodity chemicals assets worth up to $4 billion. Company representatives say this will allow the company to prioritize its capital on higher margin, more consistent earnings growth businesses. Other assets identified for sale by Dow Chemical include the company’s epoxy business and some brine and energy assets, representing a total of $5 billion in revenue.

Methanol plant

OCI N.V.’s wholly owned subsidiary Natgasoline LLC plans to build a new greenfield world scale methanol plant in Beaumont, Texas. The plant is expected to have a capacity of up to 5,000 metric tons/day, or 1.75 million metric tons/year. Production is expected to start in late 2016.

World

Petrochemical plant

Grupa Lotos and Grupa Azoty have announced plans to build a $3.87 billion petrochemical plant by 2020 to reduce Poland’s reliance on imports. The plant will be built in Gdansk with help from state investment vehicle PIR, though most of the cost will have to be funded by debt and possibly a foreign partner. Financing is to be put together in 2015 after the groups complete a detailed feasibility study.

Expansion

Ineos is building a new furnace at its petrochemical plant in Rafnes, Norway as it expands capacity to use ethane made from U.S. shale gas it will store in a gas tank under construction at the site. The company is building an ethane storage tank that will enable the plant to produce 570,000 tons/year of ethylene. The extra furnace will enable it to produce 620,000 tons/year. The Norwegian plant currently houses 11 furnaces that process ethane gas and some oil-based liquids into ethylene. By the end of 2015, the company will have built a twelfth at the site. The total investment Ineos will make is around $160 million.

Liquid cracker

General Electric Co. and Carbon Holdings have signed a $500 million agreement to provide support in the building of the world’s largest liquid cracker at a petrochemicals complex on the Gulf of Suez. The naptha cracker project is part of the Tahrir Petrochemicals Complex worth $4.8 billion. The construction of the cracker is said to begin sometime in 2014 and construction is expected to take approximately 50 months. The new plant will have an annual capacity of 1,360,000 tons of ethylene and polyethylene as well as significant quantities of propylene, benzene, butadiene and linear alpha olefins.

Chexpress - November 12, 2013

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 20:34:00 +0000

North America

Proposed fine

ExxonMobil faces $2.7 million in proposed fines from The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for its March 29 pipeline spill in Arkansas. The federal regulator said it found nine probable violations of safety rules in the break in the Pegasus pipeline. The 95,000 barrel/day pipeline has been shut since spilling about 5,000 barrels of oil in Mayflower, Arkansas. Exxon is cooperating with the investigation, but is still reviewing the notice and has not determined its course of action. The company has 30 days to contest the allegations.

Layoff

Valspar Corp. has laid off about 25 of its Minneapolis, Minnesota corporate and sales workers in the last few weeks. The cuts are part of the company’s effort to restructure and shift resources. Affected workers include those in the corporate, finance and consumer sales units.

Plant closure

PolyOne Designed Structures and Solutions will close a Warsaw, Indiana plastics factory next year. The closing will put 110 people out of work. The company will cut jobs in stages, beginning in early January and ending about Sept. 30.

Proposed fine

The U.S. Labor Department’s OSHA has proposed more than $280,000 in fines against contractors working on a power plant in Berlin, New Hampshire. OSHA says workers were exposed to serious and potentially fatal injuries from cave-ins, falls, scaffold collapses, crushing, lead and electrocution hazards. No one was killed or seriously hurt, however. General contractor Babcock & Wilcox Construction Co. Inc. faces more than $116,000 in fines. The other fines were against subcontractors. A Babcock & Wilcox spokesperson says the company disagrees with the findings but will work closely with OSHA to resolve the issues.

Ethylene venture

Mexichem has entered into a joint venture with Occidental Chemical Corp. known as Oxychem. Oxychem will build a $1.5 billion ethylene plant in the United States. The plant, which will be in Ingleside, Texas should start operations in 2017.

World

Plant restart

Pertamina has restarted a refining and petrochemical complex in East Java, Indonesia owned by TPPI. The move is aimed at reducing imports of oil products and chemicals. The restart could help reduce the current account deficit in Indonesia, where import costs have been rising due to a weak rupiah. Pertamina signed an agreement with TPPI to use the facility for six months. The plant had been idled for nearly two years due to TPPI’s heavy debts. During the six-month timeframe, the plant will process 55,000 to 80,000 barrels of condensate/day and will produce about 1.5 million barrels of gasoil and fuel oil, 36,000 tons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and 2.8 million barrels of light naphtha. A total of 530,000 tons of petrochemicals will also be produced.

Purchase

Unipetrol has agreed to buy partner Royal Dutch Shell’s 16.3 percent stake in Ceska Rafinerska for $27.2 million. This will boost Unipetrol’s stake in the Czech Republic’s only refinery to 67.6 percent. The deal is expected to be complete in the beginning of 2014.

Change in plans

Kayan has dropped plans to build an ultra-high molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia. In 2012, Kayan and Petrokemya, both affiliates of Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC), signed a memorandum of understanding to equally own and finance the project. Kayan said that preliminary results of an economic feasibility study were not in line with the company’s growth plans.

Chexpress - October 22, 2013

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 23:47:00 +0000

North America

Ammonia plant

BASF SE and Yara International ASA are considering a big ammonia plant on the U.S. Gulf Coast. While company officials have said everything is still under discussion, a current BASF factory would be the most likely site. BASF has plants in Beaumont, Pasadena and Port Arthur, Texas and in Geismar, Louisiana.

Gas project revamp

Imperial Oil Ltd. is looking at a major revamp of its Mackenzie gas project that would see the stalled northern venture reborn as part of an expansive liquefied natural gas (LNG) development. A shift to LNG is under consideration as the Mackenzie pipeline’s economics remain weak due to cheap shale gas across the continent.

Ethane cracker

Technip was awarded a contract by Sasol to supply its proprietary ethylene technology and front-end engineering design (FEED) for a grassroots ethane cracker. The cracker will be located at Sasol’s Lake Charles, Louisiana site. It is estimated to produce 1.5 million tons/year of ethylene.

Sale

Dow Chemical Co. will sell its polypropylene licensing and catalysts business to W.R. Grace & Co. for $500 million. This sale is part of Dow Chemical’s strategy to shed its non-core businesses. The polypropylene licensing and catalysts business provides technology and catalysts to make polypropylene, which is used to manufacture plastics and synthetic fabrics. As part of the deal, W.R. Grace will acquire Dow Chemical’s catalysts manufacturing plant in Norco, Louisiana and customer contracts, licenses, intellectual property and inventory. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year, pending regulatory approvals.

World

VCM plant

Fluor Corporation’s ICA Fluor industrial engineering-construction joint venture with Empresas ICA, S.A.B. de C.V., signed a contract with Petroquimica Mexicana de Vinilo, a joint venture between Mexichem and Pemex, for the revamp of the vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) plant at the Pajaritos petrochemical complex near Veracruz, Mexico. ICA Fluor will be responsible for the engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance and commissioning services to bring the VCM facility to its capacity of 405,000 tons/year from its current nearly 200,000 tons/year. The project is planned to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2015.

Butadiene plant

MOL’s petrochemicals unit TVK will build a new butadiene plant in Tiszaujvaros, Hungary. The planned investment is $106.4 million. The new plant will have an annual capacity of 130,000 tons and will be opened in the second quarter of 2015.

Aromatics plant

A subsidiary of Foster Wheeler AG’s Global Engineering and Construction Group has been awarded a contract by Petrochemical Industries Company for a pre-feasibility study and a market report for a proposed aromatics plant in Kuwait. The study is scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2013.

Chexpress - October 8, 2013

Tue, 08 Oct 2013 12:40:00 +0000

North America

Regional sales office

Dow Chemical Co. has opened a new Southeast regional sales office at is Polyurethane Systems North American Headquarters in Marietta, Georgia. The Southeast Regional Sales Center is home to approximately 50 sales associates who will use the facility to host customer meetings, conduct team events and participate in sales training.

Acquisition

Emerson has announced its intent to purchase Virgo Valves and Controls, LTD. Virgo, a manufacturer of ball valves and automation systems, will operate within Emerson Process Management’s final controls business. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Natural gas to liquids plant

Shell Oil Co. has chosen a site near Sorrento, Louisiana as the potential location for a $12.5 billion natural gas to liquids plant that would create 740 jobs. The company says it will decide after engineering studies and environmental permitting are done. The plant would create natural gas-based diesel and jet fuels along with specialty waxes and products used in plastics and detergents that are normally made from oil.

Ethylene cracker project

Fluor Corporation and JGC Corporation’s 50/50 joint venture was awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract by Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP for its U.S. Gulf Coast Petrochemicals Project. The project consists of the ethylene unit (cracker) and associated offsite components to be built at Chevron Phillips Chemical’s existing Cedar Bayou complex in Baytown, Texas. The scope includes engineering and procurement for the outside batter limit as well as direct hire construction for the entire cracker project.

World

Polyethylene unit

Unipetrol has acquired technology and production rights for a new polyethylene unit and wants to pick a contractor for the project in the first half of 2014. Even after posting net losses in 2011 and 2012, the company laid out plans in June to invest almost $1 billion over the next five years in its petrochemical segment. Unipetrol signed a license agreement with Ineos for the right to use a production process and technology for the new polyethylene unit that will help increase utilization of its petrochemical steam cracker.

Investment

Odebrecht plans to spend $8.1 billion in Mexico in the next five years in what appears to mark the biggest investment pledge yet from a Brazilian firm there. The company will invest in petrochemicals, renewable energy, ethanol and sugar production and highway concessions.

Petrochemical plant

Alpek has agreed to form a joint venture through its subsidiary, Petrotemex, with United Petrochemical Company. The joint venture will build a purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plant in Russia’s independent republic of Bashkortostan. Each company will invest $10 million to carry out a feasibility study for the plant, with construction subject to approval by the directors of both companies. The plant would have a maximum installed capacity of 600,000 tons each of PTA and PET and would use Alpek’s IntegRex technology. The plant would use locally sourced paraxylene (PX), with negotiations currently underway with JSOC Bashneft for the feedstock supply.

EVA and LDPE plant

Saudi International Petrochemical (Sipchem) has begun operations at its new 200,000 ton/year ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) and low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant at Jubail Industrial City. The company completed the first phase, which includes installation and testing of major equipment and pre-manufactured modules, prior to completion of basic preparations for initial start up during the fourth quarter of this year.

Chexpress - September 24, 2013

Tue, 24 Sep 2013 11:53:00 +0000

North America

Packaging Center of Excellence

H.B. Fuller Company has decided to invest in a Packaging Center of Excellence in North America to address customers’ packaging adhesives needs across a broad range of applications, substrates and environmental conditions. The center is expected to open in early 2014 and will be the company’s fourth center focused specifically on customer collaboration.

Fire

A recent fire at Danlin Industries’ facility in Thomas, Oklahoma destroyed a chemical plant and caused small explosions, forcing the evacuation of about a dozen people from nearby homes, but resulting in no injuries. The fire started about three hours after the last employees left the facility. The entire facility burned down. The facility had nontoxic but highly flammable chemicals that are used in the oil and gas production industry. Authorities are still trying to determine the cause of the fire.

Gas-to-methanol project

Fluor Corporation has been awarded an engineering and design services contract by South Louisiana Methanol L.P. for a potential 5,000 metric tons/day methanol project in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Fluor is working to finalize the process design and complete preliminary design for the facility.

World

Isobutylene production unit

UOP LLC’s technology has been selected to produce key ingredients for fuels and synthetic rubber in China. Panjin Heyun New Material Co. will use UOP’s C₄ Oleflex process to produce isobutylene. The company will also use UOP’s Butamer process, which converts normal butane to isobutene, thereby maximizing the feedstock utilization of the UOP Oleflex process. The new unit is expected to start up in 2014 and will process approximately 400,000 metric tons/year of isobutene feedstock at its facility in Liaoning Province, China. UOP will provide the engineering design, technology licensing, catalysts, adsorbents, equipment, staff training and technical service for the project.

Refinery substations

Siemens has been awarded a turnkey contract by the Kuwait National Petroleum Co. (KNPC) to supply high-voltage substations at refineries south of the city of Kuwait. The $240 million project will provide reliable power supply to two of KNPC’s biggest refineries. The project is scheduled for completion in December 2015.

Cost cuts

Bayer is stepping up cost cuts at its MaterialScience unit to counter production overcapacity in the industry and high raw material prices. Bayer’s MaterialScience unit makes polycarbonate plastics for panoramic roofs in Daimler’s Smart and Mercedes SLK convertibles and for blu-ray disks. It is also the world’s largest maker of chemicals for insulation and padding foams.

Chexpress - September 10, 2013

Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:10:00 +0000

North America

Fertilizer plant

Northern Plains Nitrogen is buying land next to Grand Forks’ municipal sewage lagoons. The group is planning a $1.5 billion nitrogen fertilizer plant. The plant will receive gas through an existing pipeline near the project site or directly from the western oil patch through a proposed pipeline.

Cracker plant

Shell Oil Co. is seeking ethane suppliers for its proposed petrochemical complex at an industrial site about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Shell is still a year or more away from making a final decision on whether to build the multi-billion dollar plant. Shell says securing enough ethane for the potential cracker plant is a key step. The plant would convert ethane from Marcellus Shale natural gas into more profitable chemicals such as ethylene.

Phosphates plant

Hubei Xingfa Chemicals Group plans to open a facility in Effingham County in Georgia. The company expects to develop its plant on 83 acres and will establish a production line to produce phosphates, which will be exported through the port of Savannah.

World

Maintenance

Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) will close one of its two crackers at its Netherlands plant for maintenance later this month. The Olefins 3 cracker at its Geleen site will close for six weeks beginning September 15 for routine maintenance work. This is part of a $178 million upgrade to increase energy efficiency. The upgrade will reduce the cracker’s energy consumption by 8 percent and increase production by 2 percent.

Closure

Total has confirmed that it plans to close down its last ethylene-making unit at is Carline site in eastern France, effective the second half of 2015. Cheap U.S. ethylene is forcing European and Asian plants to rethink their output mix.

Oil refinery

Aliko Dangote, president of Dangote Group, signed a loan worth $3.3 billion from 12 Nigerian and international banks toward a $9 billion project that will give Nigeria its largest oil refinery and petrochemical and fertilizer complex. At the completion of the projects, Nigeria is expected to become self-sufficient in fertilizer and refined petroleum products as well as an exporter. The 400,000 barrels/day oil refinery and complex will become operational in 2016. The plant will also produce 2.8 million tons of urea for fertilizing crops and to produce polypropylene.

Chexpress - August 27, 2013

Wed, 28 Aug 2013 02:20:00 +0000

North America

USGC petrochemical project

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has received air permits from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for its planned ethane cracker and polyethylene units. This is in addition to the greenhouse gas permit the Environmental Protection Agency granted for the cracker earlier this year. Pending final board approval, the 1.5 million metric tons/year ethane cracker would be built at the Chevron Phillips Chemical’s Cedar Bayou facility in Baytown, Texas. The new polyethylene facilities, each with an annual capacity of 500,000 metrics tons, would be built on a site near the Chevron Phillips Chemical Sweeny facility in Old Ocean, Texas. The estimated date for the project’s completion is 2017.

Acquisition

Panda Power Funds will begin construction immediately on an 829-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant in Bradford County, Pennsylvania after acquiring the project from Moxie Energy and completing financing. The Panda Liberty generating station is expected to begin commercial operations by early 2016. This is in addition to the recently announced 859-megawatt gas-fired plant in Maryland, subject to financing and other conditions.

Explosion

A 10,000-gallon fuel oil tank exploded at Brownies Oil Co. The tank went flying across a road, killing a worker who was welding nearby. The man died from blunt-force trauma to his head. No one else was injured or killed. The tank spilled 7,500 gallons of fuel and flooded a dike encircling the area, but the spill was contained.

World

Coal-to-chemicals projects

China Coal Energy is stepping up investments in downstream coal-to-chemicals projects amid an oversupply and declining coal prices. The budget this year for projects to expand chemicals production has for the first time exceeded that for coal mines – 17.4 billion yuan for coal-to-chemicals projects versus 3.2 billion yuan for coal mine development. The chemicals include methanol, polypropylene and polyethylene.

Carbon capture-and-use plant

Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC) has hired Linde Group to build the world’s largest plant for capturing and using climate-warming carbon dioxide. An affiliate of SABIC, the United Jubail Petrochemical Company, plans to capture around 1,500 tons/day of carbon dioxide from ethylene plants and purify it for use in SABIC-owned petrochemical plants in Jubail. The carbon capture and utilization plant will prevent about 500,000 tons/year of the gas from being released into the atmosphere.

Gas pipeline

Construction of a gas pipeline from Sheberghan gas field in Afghanistan to Tajikistan was recently discussed at a meeting between Ministers in each country. The parties discussed various issues of cooperation in the energy sector. According to preliminary estimates, the overall cost of the project could be up to $300 million.

Chexpress - August 13, 2013

Tue, 13 Aug 2013 12:29:00 +0000

North America

Contract

A subsidiary of Foster Wheeler AG’s Global Engineering and Construction Group has been awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract by Enterprise Products Operating LLC for a propane dehydrogenation unit (PDH) and associated power, utilities and infrastructure at a plant in Mont Belvieu, Texas. The contract value was not disclosed. The construction will be executed through Foster Wheeler’s combined use of direct-hire labor and subcontractors.

Contract

A subsidiary of Foster Wheeler AG’s Global Engineering and Construction Group has been awarded a contract by The Dow Chemical Company to provide detailed engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCm) services for the LA-3 Crack More Ethane (CME) project at Dow’s Plaquemine petrochemical facility in Louisiana. The project is aimed at improving the plant ethane flexibility to take advantage of low-cost feedstock. The scope includes brownfield additions and retrofit modifications to the plant. The contract value was not disclosed.

Sale

ConocoPhillips is selling its stake in a Canadian oil sands project to Exxon Mobil Corp and Imperial Oil Ltd for about $720 million. The all-cash deal involves the sale of 226,000 acres of undeveloped land known as the Clyden oil sands leasehold. After the deal closes, Exxon Canada will own a 72.5 percent interest in the land, with Imperial controlling the rest.

World

Gas Chemical Project

The Irkutsk region will provide assistance to LLC Irkutsk Oil Company (INK) on a 120 billion ruble project to build a gas chemical complex near Ust-Kut, Russia. INK is currently researching the possibility of implementing such a project and is starting to draft a feasibility study for a potential investment project aimed at developing gas reserves at the Yaraktinskoye, Markovskoye and West Ayanskoye hydrocarbon deposits. The project entails the construction of a comprehensive gas treatment unit. INK expects to start supplying pipeline gas to Ust-Kut in the first half of 2016.

Contract

The National Methanol Company, a manufacturing affiliate of the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation, has awarded the engineering, procurement and construction contract for its polyoxymethylene (POM) project to an unnamed company. This brings National Methanol Company closer to producing high-strength, low-friction engineering plastic. The project is an expansion of the company’s existing operations as a joint venture between Sabic, CTE and Duke Energy. The POM plant is expected to have an annual capacity of 50,000 tons.

Project Delay

Petronas will start up its $19 billion petrochemicals complex in Malaysia in 2018 – a further delay in the country’s largest-ever infrastructure project. Petronas had already put back the project from late 2016 to early 2017. The project has apparently been complicated by the need to secure water supplies as well as cater for proposed international partners.

Chexpress - July 30, 2013

Sat, 27 Jul 2013 00:43:00 +0000

North America

FEED contract

Fluor Corporation has secured a front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for Sasols world-scale ethane cracker and associated derivative chemicals facility at is Lake Charles Chemical Complex in Louisiana. FEED work is underway and is expected to be completed in late 2013. The new ethane cracker and associated facilities will allow Sasol to expand its differentiated derivatives business in the United States. Project start up and completion is forecasted in 2017 with the expected production of 1.5 million tons/year of ethylene with downstream derivative plants.

R&D center

Bayer CropScience will move its U.S-based research and development operations for vegetable seed and crop-protection products from Davis, California into an existing 164,000-square-foot facility in West Sacramento, California. The move is scheduled to happen in next years first quarter.

Isobutanol-blended gasoline

Gevo, Inc. has begun supplying the U.S. Coast Guard R&D Center with initial quantities of finished 16.1 percent renewable isobutanol-blended gasoline for engine testing. The U.S. Coast Guard R&D Center is using the Gevo-blended fuel as part of a 12-month, long-term operational study on marine engines that begin in June. The testing is being performed under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement among the U.S. Coast Guard, Honda, and Mercury. The testing is focused on two of the Coast Guards platform boats 38-foot Special Purpose Craft-Training Boat and 25-foot Response Boat Small. Isobutanol is a biofuel that compared to ethanol, has higher energy density, lower RVP, and does not present the phase separation issues seen with ethanol. Testing will take place at the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Yorktown, Virginia.

Expansion

QualiChem has completed a major expansion of its headquarters, laboratory and manufacturing facilities. The companys Salem, Virginia facility is now 70 percent larger, with 35 percent more space for quality control, R&D laboratories and manufacturing, plus 50 percent more floor space for raw material and finished goods. The shipping and receiving area has increased by 233 percent and the company has added a 45-seat training and conference center.

World

Safety Milestone

Qatargas Laffan Refinery Companys Diesel Hydrotreater (DHT) project completed two million-man hours without any Lost Time Injuries. The DHT Unit is designed to produce diesel with less than 10 parts per million sulphur content with the Euro 5 environmental specification and will be built and integrated into the existing Laffan Refinery by 2014. The Unit will process 54,000 barrels/stream day of straight run Light Gas Oil feedstock from the existing Laffan Refinery 1 and the second planned refinery.

Acquisition

FMC Corporation has moved into the Omega-3 market with the $345 million acquisition of Epax. The senior management team at Epax will remain with the business. As part of the deal, FMC has entered into a long-term supply agreement with Trygg Pharma to provide Trygg with high-concentration Omega-3 fish oil for use as an active pharmaceutical ingredient.

Pipeline

The first phase of Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Cos 280 kilometer Muscat-Sohar pipeline project is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2014. The project is expected to cost between $200 250 million. The first phase will include the construction of a pipeline between Mina al Fahal refinery and Muscat airport. Phase two of the project is currently in the engineering phase and will involve the construction of a pipeline between Mina al Fahal refinery and Sohar Refinery as well as an intermediate storage facility. The company hopes to commission the second phase by 2016.

Shale oil deal

YPF has persuaded Chevron Corp. to sign a long-sought deal to invest $1.24 billion in developing Argentinas shale oil deposits. The joint venture adds up to $1.5 billion overall. The YPF-Chevron venture will start with a $300 million pilot hydraulic fracturing project involving more than 100 wells in an area known as the Enrique Mosconi Cluster.

Chexpress - July 16, 2013

Tue, 16 Jul 2013 11:33:00 +0000

North America

Top Award

PPG Industries’ CEO Charles Bunch will be honored on Oct. 30 with this ICIS Kavaler Award by The Chemists’ Club. The award recognizes Bunch’s contributions to the chemical industry, including the spinoff of PPG’s commodity chemicals business and the acquisition of the architectural coatings unit of AkzoNobel.

Derailment scrutiny

The deadly derailment and explosion of an oil train in Quebec involved DOT-111 type tanker cars, which have come under scrutiny from transportation safety experts concerned with what they say is their tendency to split open during derailments and other major accidents. DOT-111 tank cars are the workhorse of the rail freight industry, hauling all sorts of chemicals and hazardous materials. A 1991 safety study revealed design weaknesses that accident investigators say almost guarantee the tankers will split open in major derailments. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has noted several problems with the type of car: its steel shell is too thin to resist puncture in accidents; the ends are especially vulnerable to tears from couplers that can fly up after ripping off between cars; and unloading valves and other exposed fittings on the tops of tankers can break down during rollovers. The rail and chemical industries and tanker manufacturers have voluntarily committed to safety changes for cars built after Oct. 2011 to transport ethanol and crude oil, including thicker tank shells and shields on the ends of the tanks to prevent punctures. But, the industry is appealing to regulators to reject the NTSB recommendations that the existing ethanol tankers built under the older specifications be modified or phased out.

Lawsuit

Two families are suing Allford Propane for more than $2 million over a deadly blast at a Eufaula, Oklahoma sandblasting company. The explosion in May left one man dead and another badly burned. The wrongful death lawsuit filed by the deceased man’s family seeks more than $1 million; the injured man’s family is also seeking more than $1 million. The suit blames the propane company for the explosion.

World

Investment

Eni plans to renovate and recover its Gela, Italy refinery. The aim of the project is to create an economically sound refinery capable of meeting the challenges of a competitive and evolving market. The refinery will also be redesigned to be more environmentally friendly and respectful to the local area. The project is estimated to involve an investment of €700 million and should be fully operational in 2017.

Purchase

The VETEK Group has completed its purchase of the Odesa Oil Refinery from Lukoil. The refinery is another link in the closed business cycle VETEK is building: from delivery of crude oil to production and retail sale of finished product. The Odesa refinery will be restarted soon. It can refine 2.8 million tons of crude oil/year. The plant was shut down in Oct. 2010 due to the economic situation that had developed on the oil-product market in Ukraine as well as due to changes to the oil delivery scheme.

Algae-based fuel

PTT has set its sights on introducing algae-based energy by 2017 and it is keen on setting up production facilities in Australia in the near future. The company is already in partnership with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s national science agency, to develop a project involving algae-oil extraction. Currently, the research and development of fuel extracted from marine algae costs about three to four times as much as palm-oil-based biodiesel.

Lubricant plant

Sinopec has opened its first lubricant manufacturing plant outside Tuas, Singapore. The company has invested about 650 million yuan in the lubricant production facility, which will also serve as its Asia-Pacific hub for logistics and service. The plant is expected to employ between 140 and 150 people and will have an initial annual production capacity of 100,000 tons of lubricant.

Chexpress - June 25, 2013

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:04:00 +0000

North America

Acquisition

Monsanto has acquired Grassroots Biotechnology for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition came after a long-term partnership between the two companies. Grassroots developed a gene-expression platform and other agricultural technologies to complement Monsanto’s portfolio. Research employees were transferred to Monsanto as part of the deal.

Plant blasts

Two chemical plant accidents in Louisiana – only a day part – killed three workers and left many more injured. The first explosion killed two workers at the Williams Cos. ethylene plant in Geismar. The cause is still unknown. While a massive fire raged, 300 workers were evacuated and 73 of them were taken to area hospitals. At the CF Industries nitrogen fertilizer plant in Donaldsonville, 10 miles away, one worker was killed and seven were injured when a temporary distribution manifold ruptured during the off-loading of nitrogen gas.

Investment

EcoDual Inc. will relocate its manufacturing assets in a new facility in Beaufort County, South Carolina over the next 18 months. The $13 million investment by the dual fuel conversion systems company is expected to create 307 new jobs over the next five years. The company’s dual fuel conversion systems for heavy-duty, Class 8 trucks can help reduce fuel costs by allowing these vehicles to operate on a combination of diesel and natural gas while providing full torque and power.

Explosion

Two people were killed in a massive explosion at a fireworks warehouse west of Montreal, Quebec, leaving a huge plume of smoke visible for miles. A series of explosions subsequently leapt from the charred building after the initial blast at B.E.M. Fireworks. Two bodies were found in the wreckage. Nearly two hours after the blast, fireworks could still be heard exploding at the scene of the fire that continued to burn out of control hours after the explosion. Police ordered the surrounding community of Coteau-du-Lac evacuated and closed a nearby highway in both directions.

World

Electrical equipment supplier

Eaton has entered into an agreement with Sadara Chemical Company (a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and The Dow Chemical Company) to supply motor control, power distribution solutions and engineering services. Under the multi-million dollar agreement, Eaton will provide equipment and services to enhance the overall reliability and safety of Sadara’s fully integrated chemical complex currently under construction in Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia. The Sadara complex will be the world’s largest integrated chemical facility ever built in a single phase. It will produce more than three million metric tons of value-added chemicals and plastics to serve the rapidly expanding energy, transportation, infrastructure and consumer products sectors.

Petrochemical complex

State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (Socar) will be investment $500 million in the building of an oil and gas refining and petrochemicals complex in Garadagh. The plan is for it to go into operation by 2021. It will have a gas refinery, an oil refinery and a petrochemicals plant. The plan is for a nuclear-powered generating facility to be built in order for them to operate autonomously.

Plant expansion

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. was awarded a contract by Polimeri Europa UK Limited (Versalis group) to provide engineering, procurement and construction management (ECPM) services to support a major expansion at Polimeri Europa UK’s plant in Grangemouth, Scotland. Under the terms of the contract, Jacobs is providing EPCM services in collaboration with Polimeri Europa UK to support the installation of a new finishing line and the associated works. The expansion is expected to significantly increase Polimeri Europa UK’s rubber production capacity in Grangemouth.

Chexpress - June 11, 2013

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:08:00 +0000

North America

Workforce Training Program Funding

ExxonMobil will fund a $500,000 workforce training program to enable Houston, Texas’ leading community colleges to prepare thousands of local residents for jobs in the growing local chemical manufacturing industry. The incentive will build on the success of the Lee College ExxonMobil Process Technology Program that will benefit 50,000 students and educators in the next five years. Lee College will work with Houston Community College, Lone Star College, San Jacinto Junior College, Alvin Community College, Wharton County Junior College, Brazosport College, Galveston College and College of the Mainland to train students seeking certification or completion of degree programs for instrumentation, electrical, machinist/millwright, welding, pipefitting and other skills and competencies needed by the chemical industry. There are also plans to include area high schools in the program in the future.

Pipeline Contract

Wood Group Mustang has been awarded a contract by The Dow Chemical Company to provide services for construction of approximately 140 miles of ethane, ethylene, propane and propylene pipelines, associated interconnections, and station modifications between Dow Texas Operations in Freeport, Texas and facilities at Mt. Belvieu, Texas. The pipelines and station upgrades are part of construction for a world-class ethylene unit previously announced as part of Dow’s plans to further connect its U.S. operations with cost-advantaged feedstocks available from increasing supplies of U.S. shale gas. Wood Group Mustang will provide engineering, field services and construction management on the project. Completion is scheduled for late 2016.

Expansion

Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP will expand its ethylene production by 200 million pounds by adding a tenth furnace to ethylene unit 33 at its Sweeny complex in Old Ocean, Texas. The new furnace will achieve lower emissions and incorporate Best Available Control Technology (BACT). Construction is targeted to commence within the next quarter with anticipated startup in 2014. The additional furnace will not add to the nameplate capacity of the facility; however, the increased operating factor should result in a net increase of 200 million pounds of ethylene availability to provide additional operational flexibility and reliability.

World

Ethylene Production

ExxonMobil’s Singapore Chemical Plant is now producing ethylene from the facility’s second world-scale steam cracker. The expansion is integrated with the existing petrochemical plant. During the next few weeks, the petrochemical complex will increase production at its three polyethylene plants, two polypropylene plants, a specialty metallocene elastomers unit and the expanded oxo-alcohol and aromatics units.

LNG Terminal

Plinacro has completed a concept design for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on the Adriatic Island of Krk. The Krk LNG terminal project is being developed by LNG Hrvatska, a 50/50 joint venture between Plinacro and HEP. The terminal will have a regasification capacity of 5.0 billion cubic meters of gas annually and is projected to cost $776.6 million. The environmental impact assessment and the preliminary design should be completed in July and August, respectively.

Pipeline Construction

Construction of the Nabucco-West gas pipeline may begin in 2015 if the Shah Deniz Consortium selects this pipeline as its route for the export of Azerbaijani gas to Europe. If selected, Nabucco will start getting equipment and materials ready in 2014 so that they can start building the pipeline in 2015 and start transporting gas at the end of 2018 or the beginning of 2019. The plan states that gas could be provided via the pipeline to countries through which the pipeline runs and to the Balkan countries, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany, Ukraine and others. The Shah Deniz consortium is in the process of choosing between the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP and Nabucco-West projects as an export route for Azerbaijani gas to Europe. Their decision is expected by the end of this month. The TAP project is designed to transport natural gas from the Shah Deniz field under State-2 through Greece and Albania to Western Europe. Nabucco-West is a truncated version of the Nabucco pipeline that envisages laying of pipeline from the Turkish-Bulgarian border to Austria’s Baumgarten.

Refinery Contract

Technip was awarded a contract by SCOP for project management consultancy (PMC) services for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) phase of the Karbala refinery in Iraq. This award follows the front-end engineering design executed by Technip in 2010. The scope of work will be done in two phases. Phase one includes issuing enquiries for the EPC contract, bids clarification, evaluation and contracts finalization with the EPC contractors. Phase two includes overall management of the EPC contract execution.

Chexpress - May 28, 2013

Mon, 27 May 2013 15:09:03 +0000

North America

Refinery project

Worldwide Energy Consortium, Inc. is beginning the initial Engineering/Permitting phase for its new refinery located near Gardendale, Texas. The site was chosen to take advantage of the oil production from the Eagle Ford Shale play. The facility is expected to be operational by the last quarter of 2014.

Laboratory purchase

Enerlabs has signed an Asset Purchase Agreement to acquire a third testing laboratory in Oklahoma for $600,000. Subject to financing, closing is anticipated within the next 90 days. This laboratory specializes in hydrocarbon testing and is a full service analytical lab serving the petrochemical, petroleum products and refinery industries.

Gas plant

The North Dakota Public Service Commission gave a natural gas processing plant near Watford City the green light to move forward for construction. Commissioners unanimously approved a certificate of site compatibility for ONEOK’s Garden Creek III plant. The 100 million cubic feet/day processing plant will be located on the site of an identical facility already under construction. This third plant is expected to be completed in 2015.

World

Acquisition

DEKRA has signed a purchase agreement to acquire Raysonics Group, a market leader for non-destructive testing (NDT) in South Africa. Raysonics offers a broad range of conventional techniques for NDT as well as advanced testing methods. The acquisition gives DEKRA access to markets in southern Africa. Members of the Raysonics management team will remain in leading roles within the company.

Acquisition

H.B. Fuller Company has signed an agreement to purchased Plexbond Quimica, S/A, a provider of chemical polyurethane specialties and polyester resins. Plexbond Quimica operates a manufacturing facility in Curitiba, Brazil. With this acquisition, H.B. Fuller increases its ability to delivery specialty adhesives solutions to customers in Brazil and across South America.

Acquisition

Bayer has signed an agreement to acquire 100 percent of the shares of Steigerwald Arzneimittelwerk, a privately held pharmaceutical company specializing in pharmacy-only herbal medicines. Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close at the beginning of July 2013. Bayer has committed to take over all of Steigerwald’s 180 employees.

Modernization project

Total has approved a €1 billion modernization project for its Antwerp production facilities. Two major projects will be implemented. First, a new refinery upgrading complex consisting of a solvent de-asphalting unit and a mile hydrocracking unit. The unit is intended to primarily convert heavy fuel oil into desulphurized diesel and ultra-low sulfur heating oil. The facility is scheduled to start up in early 2016. Second, a new plant to convert low value refinery fuel gases into low cost petrochemical feedstock, replacing expensive oil-based naphtha. The facility is scheduled to start up in early 2017.

Chexpress - May 14, 2013

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:26:00 +0000

North America

Natural gas

ExxonMobil and Qatar Petroleum have agreed to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Brittan from their proposed export plant in the United States. Under the deal, the companies would send up to 15.6 million tons of LNG each year to their South Hook terminal in Wales from the Golden Pass plant in Texas. The move is pending U.S. government approval to build the plant and export LNG.

Acquisition

Flotek Industries Inc. is buying Florida Chemical Co. in a deal valued at about $102.5 million. Florida Chemical has served as a supplier and partner to Flotek for more than 15 years. Flotek does not plan to make any immediate changes to the structure and operations of Florida Chemical.

Site plans

Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P. has taken ownership of the closed Marcus Hook refinery near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company plans to repurpose the refinery as a hub for shipping liquid fuels produced from natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus and Utica Shales. Sunoco Logistics acquired the refinery for $60 million from its former parent company, Sunoco Inc.

Contract

Fluor Corporation has been awarded a contract by The Dow Chemical Company to execute a significant portion of its U.S. Gulf Coast investments. Fluor’s scope includes the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of a propane dehydrogenation unit, an ethane cracker, and associated power, utilities and infrastructure facility upgrades to support each unit. The facilities will be constructed in Freeport, Texas.

World

Work halted

The government has halted a chemical plant project in Chengdu, China amid concerns over its proximity to an earthquake fault line. The government will not allow production at the petrochemical project in Pengzhou to begin prior to a legally required examination. The recent earthquake in Sichuan has reignited concerns over potential health hazards caused by the petrochemical factory.

Gas deal

Woodside Petroleum Ltd. aims to finalize a $1.2 billion deal to buy a 30% stake in a big natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea by June. The Leviathan gas field contains an estimated 18 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It is the world’s largest deepwater gas find in a decade.

Modular refinery project

The Nigerian Ministry of Trade and Petroleum Refining and Strategic Reserve’s (PRSR) $4.5 billion modular refinery project remains uncertain, with two months before the planned inauguration of the first phase of the project. The two entities signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in 2012, which provided for the construction of six modular refineries with combined refining capacity of 180,000 barrels of crude oil/day that would have been constructed in the country within the next 18 months by PRSR. Each modular refinery, when functional, will refine up to 30,000 barrels of crude/day, producing up to five million liters of petrol, diesel, kerosene and Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO). Recent checks on the status of the project show that no concrete work has taken place.

Consolidation

ExxonMobil Lubricants India is set to consolidate its industrial lubes business in India by offering a wider range of its global products as it sees its synthetic oils gaining momentum. Manufacturing, power and cement plants have already switched over to superior oils ensuring efficiency and the new segments are steadily moving toward use of more efficient synthetic lubricants.

Chexpress - April 30, 2013

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:35:00 +0000

North America

Methanol plant move

Methanex Corporation is relocating its second one million ton/year methanol plant from its Chile site to Geismar, Louisiana. The plant is expected to be operational by early 2016 and has an estimated total cost of approximately $550 million.

Fractionation project

UOP LLC has been selected by Crosstex Processing Services, LLC to provide technology and equipment to extract petrochemical feedstocks from natural gas liquids (NGLs) derived from shale gas. UOP will build and install UOP Russell fractionation equipment that is designed to extract ethane and propane from mixed natural gas liquid streams. UOP will provide Crosstex with a full turn-key solution that includes on-site installation and start-up services for the UOP Russell equipment as well as other related equipment and infrastructure. The equipment will be installed at the Crosstex facility in Plaquemine, Louisiana. Start-up is scheduled for 2014.

Fertilizer plant explosion

A fire at the West Fertilizer Co. that later led to an explosion killed 15 people. After two hours of firefighters trying to extinguish the fire, an explosion at the plant registered as a 2.1 earthquake on the Richter scale, sending a column of smoke hundreds of feet into the air. The blast heavily damaged homes near the site. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board deployed a large investigation team to the scene of the fire and explosion. State officials set up air monitoring nearby.

Expansion

Corning Inc. plans a $250 million expansion of its diesel plant in Erwin, New York. The expansion will add 250 jobs to the already 500 at the facility. The plant makes emission control products used in heavy-duty diesel engine trucks and agricultural equipment. The 94,000 square-foot expansion is expected to be completed by 2015.

Expansion

Monsanto Co. plans a $400 million expansion to its research center in St. Louis, Missouri. The company will add 36 new greenhouses, offices, laboratory space and plat growth chambers that can be programmed to represent any climate around the world. Construction is expected to begin in August and by completed by 2017.

Acquisition

Honeywell International Inc. is buying RAE Systems Inc. for $340 million. The company said the acquisition will complement its existing business and expand its expertise and geographic footprint, particularly in high-growth countries like China. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.

World

Job cuts

SABIC plans to cut approximately 1,050 positions as part of a restructuring program designed to strengthen its European businesses. The plan also includes the shutdown of certain European assets. Around two thirds of the planned job cuts across Europe will involve SABIC employees with the remainder of the cuts coming from contracting staff. SABIC has initiated consultations with relevant works councils and trade unions.

Tax reduction

Brazil will lower taxes on the country’s sugarcane and petrochemical industries as the government seeks to boost the competitiveness of its exports as the U.S. expands shale gas production. Brazil will “neutralize” the PIS/Cofins social security tax on ethanol producers and petrochemical companies in the hopes of spurring more investment in the sugarcane industry.

Job cuts

BASF is cutting 500 jobs by the end of 2015 in its specialized chemicals business. The specialized chemicals division is facing a changed business environment, including new competitors and standardization requirements in some of its market segments. Most of the job cuts will come in Basel, Switzerland. The affected businesses make plastic additives, pigments and chemicals for use in leather and textile products.

Acquisition

ABB Ltd. is buying Power-One Inc. for about $1 billion. The acquisition will ramp up ABB’s capability to supply a key component used in solar systems. The deal still must be approved by regulators and Power-One shareholders. ABB expects the deal to close in the second half of this year.

Chexpress - April 16, 2013

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:37:00 +0000

North America

NGL fractionation

LyondellBasell has signed agreements with TexStar MidStream Services, LP under which TexStar will install two natural gas liquids (NGL) fractionation units adjacent to LyondellBasell affiliate, Equistar Chemicals LP’s, Corpus Christi, Texas plant. The fractionation units will have the combined capability of processing 63,000 barrels/day of NGLs produced from the Eagle Ford shale into ethane, propane, butanes and natural gasoline. Equistar will operate the fractionators for TexStar and will provide various utilities to the facility from its adjacent olefins facility. Equistar will also purchase ethane and propane produced from the units under a long-term agreement. The NGLs will be used as feedstocks for Equistar’s olefins unit to produce ethylene and propylene. Construction will start this month with startup projected for late 2013.

New tanker firm

Ridgebury Tankers LLC is a new tanker company focused on the acquisition and operation of vessels in the tanker sector. Riverstone Holdings LLC announced a $200 million commitment to Ridgebury alongside a $5.7 million commitment from Ridgebury management. The company will use the capital to acquire clean product carriers of all sizes and in the crude sector, it will focus primarily on Suezmax vessels.

R&D center

Dow AgroSciences has unveiled its new research and development facility in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Biotechnology Research Center is part of a $340-million expansion plan announced in March 2010. The project includes the 175,000-square-foot R&D facility, a 14,000-square-foot greenhouse, and the addition of more than 550 scientific and commercial jobs by 2015.

World

Fuel import

Ethiopian Petroleum Supplier Enterprise (EPSE) has said that Ethiopia has imported more than 1 million metric tons of petroleum from Sudan via the port of Djibouti. The fuel was imported at a cost of $1.12 billion during the past six months. It is expected that Ethiopia will import a similar amount of petroleum in the next six months to meet the growing demand for energy in the country.

Gasification plant

Shell Global Solutions International has signed a gasification licensed technology agreement with Saudi Aramco. The agreement is for the largest residue gasification unit to ever be built – the Jazan Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle Project (IGCC). The agreement includes the licensing of Shell gasification and acid gas removal technologies and the provisioning of engineering services. The IGCC enables the gasification of low-value residue feedstocks to produce syngas for power generation. The generated power will provide electricity for the Jazan refinery and supply within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When it starts operating, the refinery will process 400,000 barrels/day of Arabian Heavy and Arabian Medium crude oil to produce gasoline, ultra-low sulfur diesel, benzene and paraxylene.

Floating gas-export plant

ExxonMobil Corp. has laid out plans for developing the world’s biggest floating natural gas processing plant. Exxon and BHP Billiton Ltd. want to anchor a vessel extending 495 meters at sea to tap into the remote Scarborough natural gas field offshore Western Australia. Government approvals are being sought with the first production being targeted as early as 2020. The proposed facility would produce between 6 million and 7 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) a year for several decades.

Chexpress - March 26, 2013

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:16:00 +0000

North America

MDI plants investments

Huntsman Corporation has made a combined $135 million investment at two of its methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) manufacturing facilities. The investment enabled the company to increase capacity at its Geismar, Louisiana site and upgrade the downstream specialties production capability at its Rotterdam, the Netherlands site. The Geismar capacity will be increased by 50ktes to 500ktes using improved process technology. The new capacity is expected to come on-stream in 2014. At the Rotterdam facility, Huntsman is commissioning a new MDI splitter and downstream specialties manufacturing unit, which will enable the company to serve customers with a full range of next-generation, differentiated polyurethane products for automotive, adhesives, coatings and other applications. The unit will be operational by the end of March.

Petrochemical Plant

Williams plans to spend up to $900 million to build a plant that converts Alberta propane into a more valuable product used to make plastics. The proposed facility in the Industrial Heartland near Edmonton would make polymer-grade propylene. Polymer-grade propylene is more than four times as valuable as the propane used to make it. The propane dehydrogenation facility is expected to initially produce 500 kilotons/year, with the possibility of doubling output through future expansions. The plant is expected to come on line in the second quarter of 2016, provided it receives regulatory approvals. The propylene gas will be transported on pressurized railcars to petrochemical producers on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

GMO labeling

Committees in the Hawaii Senate agreed to table a proposal that, if passed, would have required labels on genetically modified food that is imported. The decision is a victory for big agriculture companies. Instead of moving forward with the bill, senators are going to push a resolution that increases the amount of research done on genetically modified organisms.

Investments

Dow Chemical will construct several Gulf Coast chemical plants and supply raw materials to a major U.S> facility planned by a Japanese joint venture. Dow will build an ethylene cracker at its Freeport, Texas site as well as add several downstream polymer facilities at yet-to-be-determined locations. Among the projects are a low-density polyethylene plant serving the packaging and telecommunication markets, an “enhanced” polyethylene facility making polymers for packaging and medical applications, and a facility producing elastomers for hot-melt adhesives. Dow also restated previous plans to build an ethylene-propylene elastomer plant. Dow’s Japanese partners, Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui & Co., plan to build a 330,000-metric-ton-per-year α-olefins facility on the Gulf Coast by 2016. The plant will consume ethylene from Dow’s production grid and supply comonomers for Dow polymers.

World

Project on track

Petrobras’ refinery and petrochemical project in Comperj is on schedule. The company recently dispelled a report about delays because of high production costs. Petrobras is targeted $236.5 billion worth of investments during a five-year period, of which $65.5 billion is earmarked for refining, transportation and commercialization of oil derivatives. The Comperj project, which is currently under construction, would include two refineries and a number of downstream petrochemical units that will produce ethylene, propylene, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP) and other chemicals.

Fertilizer project

Mosaic Co. plans to invest up to $1 billion in a joint venture in Saudi Arabia to produce phosphate. Mosaic plans to team up with Saudi Arabian mining Co. (Maaden) and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (Sabic) on the $7 billion project. Under terms of the agreement, Maaden would own 60%, Mosaic would own 25% and Sabic would own 15%. The project would give Mosaic an advantage in shipping fertilizier to India and elsewhere in Asia. Mosaic said it would help design, construct and operate the new facilities. The companies expect to finalize the agreement in the first half of this year. The facilities are expected to produce approximately 3.5 million metric tons of phosphate-related products starting in late 2016.

Investments

Solvay SA will increase its investment in Thailand while pursuing opportunities in Indonesia, Singapore and India. The company has earmarked 900 million Euros for capital expenditure this year, half of it for maintaining and developing existing plants. The other half will be used to build new capacity, the vast majority of which will be for Asian markets.

Lead paint

PPG Industries’ subsidiary, Seigneurie, is selling house paint with significant lead concentrations in Cameroon without labeling that warns users of the lead content, according to a new study by environmental health researchers. Lead concentrations are as high as 50 percent by weight in household paint being sold, and the lead concentration is more than 5,000 times the allowable limit in the U.S., the study says. In a company-issued statement, PPG said it was in compliance with all applicable laws.

Chexpress - March 12, 2013

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:34:00 +0000

North America

Petrochemical storage and processing facility

Katoen Natie USA will invest $150 million to build a plastics storage, custom packaging and distribution facility for producers of petrochemical products in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The logistics complex will include polymer terminals, warehousing and distribution facilities. It will offer a variety of processing, handling, storage and value-added services to petrochemical and specialty chemical producers. The first phase of the project is expected to begin in early 2013 and will include construction of the first 600,000 square feet of storage space, all the rail lines servicing the facility, half of the available rail yard, all rail tie-ins, and the construction of a 6-acre detention pond. The first phase should be completed by the end of 2013 with the entire facility complete by 2018.

Expansion

ExxonMobil Chemical Company has filed permit applications for a multibillion-dollar expansion at its Baytown, Texas site. The project will convert ethylene from a new world-scale steam cracker to premium polyethylene products to serve growing markets around the world. Feedstock and energy supplies will be coordinated with ExxonMobil’s upstream business.

Chemical logistics facility

Rinchem Company, Inc. has opened a 65,000-square-foot chemical logistics facility in Hollister, California. The new facility includes warehousing areas for regulated and non-regulated chemicals and gases. Services that will be offered at the site include customized warehousing, regional and long-haul transportation, freight forwarding and supply chain consulting. The new facility uses Rinchem’s Chem-Star warehouse management system, providing customers with inventory visibility across Rinchem’s global network of 26 locations.

World

Extensive safety checks

The South Korean government is launching extensive inspections of firms that deal with chemical substances. There have been growing calls for thorough measures to prevent the recurrence of toxic chemical leakage accidents after the country saw a strong of such cases during the past several months. Under the plan, the government will conduct inspections of 985 businesses nationwide that deal with large amounts of chemicals and have a track record of similar accidents, with plants to extend the scope in phases. The government will also revise relevant laws to require chemical firms to request permission to set up their businesses instead of the current system of self-registration. In addition, a three-strikes law will be introduced where firms that violate safety regulations three times during a certain period of time will face a forcible shutdown of their businesses. All chemical firms will be required to undergo safety checks of their facilities and the government will strengthen support for safety education and training.

Plastic polymers investment

Bahrain is investing in the production of plastics polymers to cater to the annual plastics consumption growth in the Gulf. A large number of Bahraini investors, including banks, manufacturers and funding companies, are investing into the rapidly growing GCC polymers industry. Bahrain is increasing its share of the production of petrochemicals, which is becoming a key driver of the kingdom’s economy and which enhances its economy diversification drive.

Ammonia plant

Toyo has been awarded a contract to construct an ammonia plant and related utility facilities with a 2,000 tons/day capacity in Luwuk, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Toyo Engineering and PT Inti Karya Persada Tehnik, an Indonesian engineering firm, will carry out the project. The plant will produce ammonia as a feedstock for downstream chemicals such as fertilizer, acrylonitrile, caprolactam and ammonium nitrate using natural gas produced from the Senoro and Toili natural gas fields in Central Sulawesi.

Expansion

Albemarle Corporation and Arab Potash Company’s joint venture, Jordan Bromine Company, has successfully commissioned the first phase of its previously announced expansion project. This phase of the project doubles the site’s bromine production capacity. The second phase of the expansion will double the current capacity of key bromine derivatives, hydrobromic acid, calcium bromide, and sodium bromide. The second phase is scheduled for commissioning in May 2013.

Chexpress - February 25, 2013

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:32:00 +0000

North America

Carbon Capture

Air Products has gone live with its system to concentrate carbon dioxide (CO2) from
two steam methane reformer (SMR) hydrogen production plants in Port Arthur,
Texas. The two plants were retrofitted using vacuum swing adsorption (VSA)
technology to separate CO2 from the gas streams coming out of the SMRs. After
capture, the CO2 will be concentrated to 97% purity and shipped to the West
Hasting oil and gas fields in Texas. The CO2 will be injected in underground
formations to help squeeze out “shut in” oil in late-stage oil fields.

Fine

West Virginia environmental regulators are seeking nearly $250,000 in new water
pollution fines against the owner of a Northern Panhandle chemical plant under
revisions to a settlement reached more than two years ago. The Department of
Environmental Protection says the former PPG Industries plant has made good
progress since the parties reached a corrective-action plan in 2010, but the
plant has struggled to consistently meet the mandatory pollution limits for
various chemicals. The plant manufactures chlorine, caustic soda, muriatic acid
and calcium hypochlorite. It was sold in January as part of a $2.5 billion deal
PPG made with Georgia Gulf. The combination of the former PPG unit and Georgia
Gulf has been renamed Axiall Corp.

Feedstock Plant

Shell Chemical LP officials are still trying to decide if they want to access the
shale gas boom and build a plastic feedstock plant in western Pennsylvania.
Shell officials first announced interest in the project in 2012, saying
newfound supplies of natural gas in the region had led them to consider
building an ethylene cracker that would use natural gas-based ethane as a
feedstock. Downstream units making polyethylene resin were also being
considered. Horsehead Corp, owner of a parcel of land where Shell has proposed
the new plant, gave Shell a six-month extension (on Dec. 26, 2012) to evaluate
the site in Monaca, Pennsylvania.

World

Tungsten Project

Woulfe Mining is near finalizing a deal to invest $260 million to finance the
redevelopment of Sangdong tungsten mine in Yeongwol, Gangwon Province, Korea.
The investment would also include building a processing plant with strategic
partner TaeguTec securing a long-term supply of the rare metal materials used
for the production of its special industrial tools. This could be the biggest
foreign direct investment to Korea by a Canadian company.

TDI Complex

Fluor Corporation has secured a contract for engineering, procurement and
construction management (EPCM) services for BASF’s toluene diisocyanate (TDI)
Complex project in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The single-train, 300,000 metric
tons/year plant will produce TDI and expand additional plants as precursors for
polyurethanes at the BASF site in Ludwigshafen. Production is scheduled to
begin in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Fertilizer Plant

The management of Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Limited has concluded plans for the
construction of Africa’s largest fertilizer plant in Eleme, Rivers State,
Nigeria. The plant is designed to produce 1.4 million tons of fertilizer/year
and will start production by the fourth quarter of 2015. It will engage largely
in the production of Urea, NPK and other types of fertilizer.

Fertilizer Project

KBR was awarded a contract by Samsung Engineering Company, Ltd. to provide a
technology license, basic engineering design package, and supply of proprietary
equipment of a 1,200 metric tons/day ammonia fertilizer plant in Carrasco,
Bolivia. The fertilizer ammonia complex will be designed using KBR’s Purifier
Technology. KBR will also supply proprietary operator training simulators and a
steam dynamic simulation study to ensure a safe, fast, efficient startup of the
ammonia plant and continued support to the operations. The project is part of
the Bolivian government’s strategic initiatives for monetization of natural gas
and demand for urea in the region. Production operations are expected to begin
in the middle of 2015.

Chexpress - February 12, 2013

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 12:54:00 +0000

North America

Propane Dehydrogenation Project

Fluor Corporation has been awarded a contract by Williams
to provide preliminary engineering services for a proposed propane
dehydrogenation (PDH) project near Redwater, Alberta, Canada. The proposed PDH
facility would primarily use the propane recovered at Williams’ existing
fractionation facility in Redwater and convert it into polymer-grade propylene,
a petrochemical feedstock used in plastics manufacturing.

Diesel Refinery

MDU Resources Group, Inc. and Calumet Specialty Products
Partners, L.P. have formed a joint venture to develop, build and operate a
diesel refinery in southwestern North Dakota. The joint venture will be called
Dakota Prairie Refining, LLC. MDU Resources Group’s participation in the joint
venture will be through its wholly owned subsidiary, WBI Energy, Inc. The
facility will process 20,000 barrels/day of Bakken crude oil. Construction
could begin this spring and is expected to take up to 20 months. The facility’s
engineering and plant design are in the final stages.

Acquisition

Ellsworth Adhesives has acquired Adhesive Methods and
Technology (AMT). With operations based in Memphis, Tennessee, AMT specializes
in industrial adhesives and dispensing equipment. This acquisition strengthens
Ellsworth Adhesives' presence throughout the mid-south and allows the company
to provide enhanced service, support and infrastructure throughout the area.

World

Additional Capacity

Shell has taken decided to upgrade its Singapore
production facility for polyols, raw materials used in the manufacture of
high-quality foams in furniture, bedding and the automotive industry. This
investment is expected to increase existing polyols capacity by more than
100,000 tons/year and add new grades to Shell’s product offer. The polyols
upgrading will be achieved by optimizing existing facilities and deploying a
catalyst that improves the on-site conversion of propylene oxide and ethylene
oxide to polyols. The project is expected to be completed in 2014.

Isobutylene Plant

UOP Oleflex process technology from UOP LLC, a Honeywell
company, has been selected by China’s Longgang Chemical Co. to produce key
ingredients for fuels and synthetic rubber. Honeywell’s UOP C4 Oleflex process
will be used to convert refinery-derived isobutene to isobutylene, a valuable
petrochemical used in the production of fuels and synthetic rubber. In addition
to technology licensing, Honeywell’s UOP will provide basic engineering,
catalysts, adsorbents, specialty equipment and engineering for the project.
Longgang Chemical Co. will use the technology to process 175,000 metric tons of
mixed butane feedstock/year at its facility in Dongying City, China. The
facility is expected to start up in 2015.

Isomerization Unit

Neste Oil has decided to build an isomerization at is
Porvoo refinery. The EUR 65 million investment is intended to increase the
output of high-octane gasoline and improve refining flexibility at the site.
The new unit is expected to be completed in 2015. The isomerization unit will
have a capacity of 600,000 tons/year.

Job Cuts

ThyssenKrupp will slash at least 2,000 jobs by 2015 as
part of a cost-saving drive as the company copes with high commodity costs and
the struggling European economy. The German steelmaker says a further 1,800
jobs may be lost as it sells parts of the company.

Chexpress - January 29, 2013

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:49:00 +0000

North America

Chemical Activity Barometer Up

The American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) monthly Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB) is showing sustained growth, notching a 0.4 percent gain over December 2012 on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis. The year-over-year 3MMA showed a solid 2.8 percent gain over January 2012. January 2013 marked the CAB’s sixth consecutive monthly gain. The CAB is a leading economic indicator derived from a composite index of chemical industry activity.

Expansion

NCI Building Systems, Inc.’s wholly owned subsidiary, NCI Group, Inc., has opened its premier Metal Coaters Coil Coating Facility in Middletown, Ohio. The opening represents the extension of NCI’s coil coating operations into the upper Midwest and Northeast, which will effectively provide the company’s Buildings and Components groups with more cost-effective regionalized access to coated products and services. It will also enable additional capacity and reach for the Coaters group to service its diverse customer base. The facility is capable of coating various gauges and widths of metal for a wide variety of applications.

Sale

OM Group Inc. has reached a deal to sell the downstream portion of its advanced materials business to a new joint venture for at least $325 million. The deal includes an initial cash payment of $325 million and potential future payments of up to an additional $110 million if the business meets certain targets over the next three years. The joint venture is expected to include Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., Lundin Mining Corp. and La Generaled des Carrieres et des Mines. The sale remains subject to regulatory approvals, but is expected to close before the end of April.

World

Execution Drug

Vietnam will being producing its own chemical for executing prisoners after factories in the European Union stopped shipments because of objections there to the death penalty. Vietnam stopped using firing squads in 2011 because of concerns it was traumatizing the shooters. Last year, the government said it was unable to executive 532 on death row because it couldn’t source the drugs for lethal injections. EU factories are the main supplier of drugs that can be used in executions. Several American states have also said objections from European factories were making it hard to find the chemical.

Closures

ArcelorMittal will close a coke plant and six production lines in Belgium. The company said collapsing demand for steel and structural overcapacity in the sector have forced it to take the measures in eastern Liege, which has had a steel industry going back two centuries. This move threatens 1,300 jobs. After the closures, the company will be operating five steel production lines, which will employ 800 people. The plant workers hope that the government will intervene to save their jobs.

Specialty Chemicals

Petronas and Evonik Industries AG have signed a letter of intent to jointly develop the production facilities of specialty chemicals within Petronas’ Refinery & Petrochemical Integrated Development (Rapid) project in Pengerant, Johor. Under the letter of intent, the two parties will form a partnership to jointly own, develop, construct and operate facilities for the production of hydrogen peroxide, C4 co-monomer and oxo-products within Rapid. The plants are expected to have the capacity to produce 250,000 tons of hydrogen peroxide, 220,000 tons of isononanol (INA) and 110,000 tons of 1-butene annually. These projects are expected to come on stream in 2016.

Desalination with Renewable Energy

Masdar is to build the UAE’s first large-scale water desalination plant to be powered by renewable energy. The company is looking for technology partners for three trial projects to run until the end of 2015. Construction on the plant is expected to begin in 2016. The pilot programs will help Masdar have a large-scale, commercially viable water desalination plant powered by renewable energy by 2020. The company is considering solar, geothermal or other sources, or maybe even a combination.

Pumping Resumes

Colombia’s 480-mile Cano Limon pipeline has resumed pumping following a rebel attack. The pipeline carries some 70,000 barrels/day from Occidental Petroleum Corp’s Cano Limon field to the Atlantic port of Covenas. The pipeline has been blown up twice this year. Each time it is attacked, Ecopetrol halts pumping, usually for several days, until repair crews can safely enter the area and fix the damanges.

Chexpress - January 15, 2013

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 13:11:00 +0000

North America

Contract Won

The M&G Group signed a $1 billion engineering, procurement and construction contract with Sinopec Engineering Co., Ltd. for the turnkey construction in Corpus Christi, Texas of the world’s largest single line PET plant with a capacity of 1 million tons/year integrated with the largest western world’s single line PTA plant with a capacity of 1.2 million tons/year. M&G’s engineering arms, Chemtex Global S.a.r.I. and M&G Finanziaria S.r.l., will provide critical equipment and services on a subcontracting basis to Sinopec. The completion of the construction of the plants, including the time required to obtain necessary permits, is expected to occur within 36 months. M&G will be the sole owner of the plants and solely responsible for their operation. The new plants will generate approximately 250 new jobs.

Restart

Dow Chemical Co. has restarted its St. Charles Olefins 2 Plant in an effort to help lower costs and strengthen the company’s competitiveness. The plant near Hanville, Louisiana began producing on-spec ethylene on Dec. 25, 2012, meeting previously announced goals to restart the site by the end of 2012. The move is part of the company’s investment plan to further connect its U.S. operations with cost-advantaged feedstocks from increasing supplies of U.S. shale gas. The plant was idled in 2009 and now that it has restarted, is expected to deliver a $150 million increase in EBITDA in 2013.

Layoffs

Dow Corning Corp. will lay off 500 employees, mostly in the professional ranks of the company. The company has said the layoffs are designed to better align the company’s cost structure with the realities of the volatile global economy. The company said it is facing significant challenges, including oversupplied markets, high raw material costs and slowed growth in many regions.

Settlement

Cape Cod Ice has agreed to pay $225,000 to settle claims by the Environmental Protection Agency that it violated Clean Air Act requirements. The EPA alleged that the cold storage and ice manufacturing company didn’t have a required risk management plan for ammonia used in the refrigeration system at its East Providence, Rhode Island facility. The agency also said the company didn’t take required precautions at its Sandwich, Massachusetts facility to minimize the consequences of an accidental release of ammonia.

Explosion

Archer Daniels Midland has temporarily shut down operations at its corn processing plant in Peoria, Illinois after an early morning explosion damaged the facility. A fire broke out after the explosion in the maintenance area of the plant. Nobody was hurt, but fire officials say one person was taken to the hospital as a precaution. Firefighters arrived at the scene to find an open gas line feeding the fire. Shutting down the gas line extinguished some of the fire, but the blaze had already spread to the roof. The company is investigating and working to determine the extent of the damage.

World

Capacity Increase

Petkim is investing in increased production capacity at its ethylene plant at its Azerbaijan complex. The production capacity will increase by 13 percent. Additionally, the production of pure terephthalic acid will be increased from 70,000 tons/year to 105,000 tons/year. As a result of the new investment, the power capacity of the petrochemical complex will increase from 3.2 million tons to 3.5 million tons/year.

Polymer Plant

Kermanshah has inaugurated its polymer plant in Tehran, Iran. It is the eighth Mehr Mandegar (Lasting Kindless) project in the petrochemical sector. The plant has a production capacity of 300,000 tons of ethylene/year and will create 700 jobs, produce more than 30 different by-products and meet the feedstock needed by the downstream petrochemical sector.

Butanol Plant

Saudi Kayan, Sadara Chemical and Saudi Acrylic Acid Company (SAAC) have joined forces to establish a new company, The Saudi Butanol Company. Under the agreement, the three partners will have equal stake in the production quantities for downstream use or for sales in the local and overseas markets. The Saudi Butanol Company will build the first butanol plant in the Middle East and the largest in the world. The plant will produce butanol to support the growth of the paints and coatings industry in Saudi Arabia. It will be located at the Tasnee Petrochemicals Complex in Jubail Industrial City and operated by Tasnee. The new plant is scheduled to go on-stream in the first quarter of 2015. It will open new job opportunities of around 200 direct and indirect positions for Saudi citizens. The design capacity of the plant is 330,000 metric tons/year of n-butanol and 11,000 metric tons/year of iso-butanol. The estimated cost of the project is $517 million.

Chexpress - December 11, 2012

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 12:51:00 +0000

North America

Fertilizer Plant

Ohio Valley Resources has selected a southern Indiana site for a nitrogen fertilizer plant. The $950 million plant will be located at a 150-acre site near the town of Rockport. Two nearby interstate natural gas pipelines will reduce the cost of obtaining the gas needed for nitrogen production. Construction should take about three years, with completion expected in 2016. The plant will likely employ 80 people.

Shut Down

Alcoa Inc. has decided to shut down a Auburn, Indiana factory after cutting hundreds of jobs there during the past decade. Factory operations will end in March, impacting the facility’s 25 hourly and 18 salaried workers. The closing decision is part of the company’s efforts to streamline operations.

Acquisition

Baxter International says it will buy Gambro for about $4 billion to broaden its dialysis product portfolio. Gambro makes dialysis products for patients with acute or chronic kidney disease, with sales of about $1.6 billion last year. Baxter says dialysis treatment rates are rising more than 5 percent annually, partly because of rising rates of diabetes and high blood pressure. Baxter will pay for the deal with a combination of debt and cash generated from overseas operations. The company expects the acquisition will close in the first half of next year.

Chemical Exposure

An oil refinery worker has died after being exposed to propane and acid at a Valero plant in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the second person to die this year from an on-the-job injury at the plant. The plant has been cited for violations related to the safe handling and control of hazardous energy and chemicals. Two workers were injured when a sight glass on a pump ruptured, exposing them to a mixture of propane and hydrofluoric acid. One of the workers died at the hospital, while the second worker and two firefighters have non-critical injuries.

World

Contract

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. has been selected by Reliance Industries Limited to provide engineering and procurement assistance services for the construction of a Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG) plant. The plant will be located at the Jamnagar refining and petrochemical complex in Gujarat, India.

Integration

PT Pertamina is set to integrate its petrochemical business through cooperation with SK Global Chemical. The partnership is expected to create opportunity for the company and increase the economic value of its oil refineries while enabling it to control the Indonesian domestic petrochemical market. Indonesia’s production of petrochemicals is not enough yet to feed the downstream industries that the country has to spend $5 billion on imports of petrochemical materials each year. The factory is to be completed in 2017 and will produce one million tons of petrochemical materials a year.

Petrochemical Plant

Grupa Lotos SA is teaming up with Zaklady Azotowe Tamow to build a petrochemical plant in Poland. The plant’s construction will cost $1.6-$1.9 billion and begin in 2014 or 1015. The plant should be ready by 2018. The new plant would be adjacent to the Gdansk-based Lotos refinery and would use its products.

Petrochemical Complex

PTT plans to build a $28.7 billion oil refinery and related petrochemical projects in central Vietnam. The refinery will have a capacity of 660,000 barrels/day. It will include the construction of petrochemical facilities, comprising aromatic and olefin plants with an annual production capacity of 3.7 million tons and 6.5 million tons, respectively. Construction could commence in 2016 with the plant expected to start operations in 2019, pending approval by the Vietnamese government.

Chexpress - November 20, 2012

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 20:46:00 +0000

North America

Acquisition Bids

Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc has trumped Bayer AG’s agreed deal to buy Schiff Nutrition International Inc. with a higher offer of $1.4 billion for the vitamin maker. The bid tops Bayer’s $1.2 billion price and opens up a potential bidding war for Schiff. Schiff’s portfolio of vitamins and nutritional supplements include MegaRed for heart car and Move Free for joints. Under the terms of its deal with Bayer, Schiff is allowed to entertain superior offers made in writing before Nov. 28; if it decides to go with another offer, it would have to pay a $22 million breakup fee to Bayer.

Growing Margins

NewMarket is a maker of chemical additives that improve the performance of petroleum products. Its products include diesel cetane improvers, tetraethyl lead, performance fuels, refinery chemicals and engine oil additives. The company has been throwing off cash hand over fist, despite being a part of a slow-growth industry. It recently announced a $25/share special dividend in addition to a six-fold increase in its regular quarterly dividend rate over the past five years.

Deepwater Exploration Blocks

BP has won four deepwater exploration blocks offshore of Nova Scotia, Canada. The Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board announced that BP bid a combined $1.04 billion for blocks five, six, seven and eight in the Call for Bids NS12-1. Together, the blocks cover an area of almost 14,000-square kilometers and are located approximately 300 kilometers off the Nova Scotia coast in water depths ranging from 100 meters to 3,000+ meters.

World

Earthquake-resistant Wallpaper

Bayer MaterialScience AG has developed wallpaper that can help protect buildings from earthquakes. The tear-resistant woven fabric is applied directly to walls using a flexibly adhesive based upon Dispercoll U, a waterborne polyurethane dispersion from Bayer. According to Bayer, the wallpaper holds large areas of masonry together, keeping it stable, giving the occupants time to flee the building to safety. Development partners included the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and KAST. The system is available from professional distributors under the name MapeWrap EQ System.

Manufacturing Enhancement

Electrochemical chlorine production is one of the most energy-intensive processes in the chemical industry. A new way of manufacturing chlorine, using oxygen depolarized cathode (ODC) technology, can reduce power consumption by as much as 30% compared to standard membrane technology, with a corresponding cut in indirect carbon dioxide emissions. The process developed by Bayer MaterialScience integrates the cathodic fuel cell reaction of oxygen reduction into the membrane electrolysis that produces chlorine from salt. By feeding in gaseous oxygen, the technology enables electrolysis to be performed at a lower voltage. A demonstration plant with an annual capacity of 20,000 metric tons of chlorine went on-stream in mid-2011 in Germany. Assuming the trial is successful, Bayer intends to gradually switch parts of its chlorine production to the new process.

Plant Upgrade

Royal Dutch Shell PLC will upgrade its petrochemical plant in Singapore to meet the rising demand for ethylene in Asia. The upgrade will increase the plant’s capacity to produce olefins and aromatics by more than 20%. The upgrade will take place during the next maintenance turn-around of the plant. The plant can currently produce 800,000 tons of ethylene/year, mainly using naphtha as a feedstock.

New Plant

PTT Global Chemical is looking into a building a new plant in China to take advantage of the strong petrochemical demand there. A feasibility study will be completed by the end of the year. The company is also evaluating investment opportunities in Indonesia.

Low-Density Polyethylene Plant

Qatar Petrochemical Company (QAPCO) is inaugurating its third low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plant. The plant is at Mesaieed Industrial City and will produce prime high-pressure grade LDPE. The new plant is designed to take advantage of the company’s excess ethylene feedstock and will produce 300,000 metric tons of LDPE/year.

Chexpress - November 6, 2012

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 12:26:00 +0000

North America

Fuel Waivers

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has exercised its authority under the Clean Air Act to temporarily waive federal clean diesel fuel requirements in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and in and around New York City to allow the use of home heating oil in highway vehicles, non-road vehicles, and non-road equipment designated by the States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York for emergency response. These waivers were granted by the EPA in coordination with the Department of Energy (DOE).

Expansion

CF Industries Inc. plans to invest $1.7 billion in Iowa to expand its facility on the south edge of Sioux City. The project is the largest capital investment ever for the state of Iowa. The project will add new ammonia and granular urea production plants to the existing CF Industries facility. It will create 100 new jobs at the plant, with the expansion operational by 2016.

Bid Win

Transportadora de Gas Natural del Noroeste, a subsidiary of TransCanada, has entered a $1 billion deal with Mexico’s Comision Federal Electricidad (CFE) to build, own and operate the El Encino-to-Topolobampo pipeline. The pipeline will be 30-inches in diameter and span 329 miles, starting from El Encino and ending in Topolobampo. TransCanada said the pipeline will also interconnect with other pipelines that will be built separately through bid processes by CFE. The pipeline is supported by a 25-year natural gas transportation service contract. TransCanada expects the pipeline to begin service in the third quarter of 2016.

World

PTW/PET Plant

Plans have been announced for a plant with the capability to produce around 1 million tons of petrochemicals at Sohar Industrial Port in Oman. The Omani government will invest approximately $800 million in the plant which will produce purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), ingredients that will trigger further investments in the downstream sector.

Downstream Framework Deal

Fluor Corporation has announced that Shell awarded the company a five-year enterprise framework agreement for engineering and project management services for Shell’s downstream, and potentially upstream, onshore projects in Europe, Africa and the Middle East (EAME). Flour will provide design, project and construction management, home-office and site-based engineering services. The agreement includes an option to be extended for another five years and opportunities to include Shell’s upstream projects and other geographic regions.

Bionaphtha Production and Sale

Neste Oil has started producing and selling on a commercial scale “green” or bio-based naphtha for petrochemical customers. The bionaphtha can be used as a feedstock for producing bioplastics and as a bio-component for gasoline. The bio-based naphtha is being manufactured at the company’s biodiesel facilities worldwide, including its $1.2 billion Singapore plant.

Purchase

Bibby Offshore has purchased the dive support vessel Toisa Polaris. The company said the move will produce as many as 60 North Sea jobs. The vessel will be renamed the Bibby Polaris and join’s Bibby’s fleet of five subsea support vessels. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Chexpress - October 23, 2012

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 11:42:00 +0000

North America

Acquisition

Ecolab has agreed to buy Champion Technologies for $2.2 billion. The two companies say the deal strongly complements Ecolab’s Sept. 2011 purchase of Nalco. The combination of Nalco and Champion will expand Ecolab’s ability to serve the energy market. Champion develops and sells performance chemicals to the oil and gas industry, with most sales targeting drilling applications. The company’s products include biocides, scale inhibitors, and water treatment chemicals. Ecolab expects to close the transaction by the end of the year.

Closure

Ecolab will close its Grand Forks, North Dakota office by the end of July 2013. Work performed at this office will transition to other company operations in the Midwest. The 144 full-time employees at this location support accounting, customer service, human resources, information technology and other administrative functions related to Ecolab’s Pest Elimination business. Many of these positions will transfer to other Ecolab locations.

Recall

Energizer Holdings, the maker of Banana Boat sunscreen, is recalling one of its spray-on products after reports that a handful of people have caught on fire after applying the lotion. Nearly two dozen formulations of UltraMist are being pulled from store shelves due to the risk that the lotion can ignite when exposed to open flame. The company says the problem appears to be with the spray valve, which is over applying the product. If the sunscreen doesn’t dry completely, it can catch on fire.

Spin Off

Murphy Oil Corporation plans to spin off to its stockholders its U.S. downstream subsidiary, Murphy Oil USA, Inc. into an independent and separately traded company. Murphy believes that creating two publicly traded companies would offer a number of advantages. Murphy USA will continue to be a flexible, low-price, high volume fuel seller. Murphy will become an independent exploration and production company with principal activities focused in the United States, Canada and Malaysia. The spin-off of Murphy USA is subject to customary conditions and is expected to be finalized in 2013.

World

Contract Awarded

Fluor Corporation’s industrial engineering partnership of Fluor and Empresas ICA, ICA Fluor, has been awarded a multi-billion dollar engineering, procurement and construction contract by Brasken Idesa. The company will design and build the new Etileno XXI petrochemical complex in Veracruz, Mexico. The complex will include a one million ton/year ethylene cracker and two high-density polyethylene plants.

Investment Talks

Keppel Corp. is in talks with Petronas to invest in a new gas-fired power plant in Johor, Malaysia that could supply electricity to Singapore. Keppel could acquire a 30 percent stake in the 1,200 MW plant, part of a much larger petroleum and petrochemical project. The new plant will primarily be used to supply the electricity needs of the RM60 billion Refinery and Petrochemicals Development (Rapid) project being built by Petronas in Pengerang, but it can also supply power to Malaysia and Singapore. Work on the project is expected to start by the middle of next year, with completion in 2016.

Soil Testing

A team of soil scientists accompanies by senior officials of HPCL have visited a site proposed for setting up a petroleum refinery in Barmer, India. The team inspected the land proposed for setting up the refinery and the geographical situation.

Greenfield Refinery

Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) Limited is looking to setup a greenfield refinery in Nigeria in an effort to expand its footprint overseas. The Nigerian government is in early-stage talks with IOC to set up an oil refinery there. Nigeria is the biggest producer of oil in Africa and the sixth largest oil producing country in the world.