Asian chemical shares tumbled in early trade on Friday

(ICIS) -- Asian chemical shares tumbled in early trade on Friday, weighed by recession fears in the US and fresh concerns over the health of European banks. A plunge in a US mid-Atlantic factory activity survey by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank spooked financial markets as the data is viewed as a barometer of national manufacturing.

The result marked the weakest reading since early 2009, according to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in a research note on Friday. A fall in US home sales in July also stoked worries that the US economic recovery could stall and slide into a recession.

A dip in European markets on Thursday fanned further concerns over the economic health of the region. Banks led the fall after a report that US regulators are stepping up scrutiny of the local operations for Europe's largest banks on concerns the sovereign debt crisis may lead to funding issues, said UBS Wealth Management Research in a note.


MRC

(ICIS) -- Chemical stocks plunged on Thursday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 3.68%.
The Dow Jones US Chemicals Index fell 6.07% on Thursday as the index's total industrial average fell by almost 420 points.

The chemical index closed at 304.17, down 19.66 points. Based on percentage, it did worse than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which closed at 10,990.58.

The plunge followed a report released by the US Department of Labor, which showed that 408,000 people filed for jobless claims for the week ended 13 August, up 9,000 from the previous week.
Also, US sales of existing homes fell by 3.5% in July from June, a drop attributed to overly tight lending standards. The report was the latest in a series of gloomy statistics released this week about the nation's struggling residential market.


MRC

(Reuters) -- South Korea's S-Oil sold 33 KT of light naphtha for Sept. 15-27 loading from Onsan to a Japanese trader at premiums of around USD 3.50 a tonne to Japan quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis, traders said on Thursday.

This was in sharp contrast to a discount of USD 2.50 a tonne it had previously secured for similar volumes lifting Aug. 21-31.

Naphtha sentiment has firmed due to tighter supplies caused by healthy demand but limited European cargoes arriving.

Cracks, the premiums/losses obtained from refining Brent crude into naphtha, were at a 3-1/2 month high on Thursday at USD 129.25 a tonne premium.

MRC

(Plastemart) -- In a bid to revive the delayed USВ10 bln refinery cum petrochem project planned at Vizag, Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) is in talks with BP Plc and Total SA of France. Both the foreign partners seem to have renewed interest in the project, and the Mittal group is likely to return.

As per original plans the HPCL-led consortium included steel billionaire LN Mittal's group, Total of France, state-owned Oil India and GAIL. However, demand too weak to justify investment led to suspension of the project in 2009. It is likely that success of Rs 18.919 crore Bhatinda refinery, which has been built by an equal joint venture of HPCL and Mittal Investment Sarl in flat three-and-a-half -years, has renewed interest in the Vizag project.

MRC

(BASF) -- BASF, the global leader in catalysis, has announced a new round of capital investment projects to increase its production capacity and further enhance its global manufacturing operations for copper and copper-chrome catalysts.


These investments are aimed at improving catalyst manufacturing efficiency to meet increased global demand. They follow an earlier round of process improvement and capacity enhancement projects for the copper-chrome product line that were completed earlier this year.


BASF produces a wide variety of base-metal catalysts, which are primarily used in petrochemical and oleochemical processing. Typical catalyst applications include guard beds; hydrogenation processes, such as solvent and gasoline dearomatization; dehydrogenation processes; monomer production; and manufacturing of specialty and detergent alcohols.

MRC