Engel opened a sales and technical center in India

(Plastics Today) -- Engel has opened a sales and technical center in Mumbai, India, offering the burgeoning local injection molding and automation market machine demonstrations, customer trials, pre-production, and mold trials. The business, Engel Machinery India Pvt. Ltd. will be headed by Jitendra Devlia and be located in a new and significantly larger space that's close to Mumbai International Airport in the Andheri East district of the city.

The center, which will also have space for training and technical seminars, will have tie-bar-less Engel victory machines with energy-saving servohydraulic Engel ecodrives installed, as well as fully electric machines from the Engel e-motion range and Engel viper robots from the company's latest generation of linear automation. The Engel spare parts warehouse is also expanding in the course of the relocation to new premises.

Engel has been active in India for 13 years, and the company expects growth to remain high in the country, which it describes as the second most important Asian market for European manufacturers of plastics processing machines after China. Expansion is being driven by strong domestic demand in the automotive, packaging, white goods, agricultural, and construction sectors.

MRC

(Plastemart) -- Russian petrochemicals major Sibur Holding has revived plans for a 500 KTa LDPE plant in Astrakhan with provisional launch planned for 2012. In 2008, Sibur was reported to have spent over EUR 6 mln in the preparation of the engineering design for a petrochemicals complex there. Plans have been revised to invest EUR 1.3 bln for a chemical complex, including ethylene and polyethylene, with a start up date of 2015.

MRC

(BBJ) -- Petrochemicals group TVK, a unit of Hungarian oil and gas company MOL, had net income of HUF 890 million in the second quarter, an improvement over the base period, when it broke even, according to TVK's consolidated IFRS report published Tuesday. Revenue rose 23.3% to HUF 110.0 billion.

Cost of raw materials and consumables increased 26.1% to HUF 101.0 billion. Total operating costs were up 24.7% at HUF 108.0 billion. Operating profit fell 20.8% to HUF 2.1 billion.

For the first half, TVK booked net income of HUF 2.3 billion, compared to a HUF 589 million loss in the base period. First-half revenue climbed 25.0% to HUF 217.6 billion.

TVK had total assets of HUF 221.4 billion on June 30, 2011, edging up 1% from twelve months earlier. Net assets were practically unchanged at HUF 136.5 billion.

MRC

(Wall Street Journal) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. snatched away a major Arctic exploration deal with Russia's OAO Rosneft from competitors including BP PLC in a sweeping agreement that for the first time gives a Russian state-controlled company access to energy projects in the U.S.


WSJ's Liam Denning breaks down the USD 3.2 billion deal struck between Exxon Mobil and Russia's OAO Rosneft to explore for oil in the Arctic's Kara Sea.

Exxon, entering a country where energy investments are fraught with political risk, agreed to invest USD 2.2 billion to explore potentially giant oil fields with state-run Rosneft in the ice-choked Kara Sea. It also finalized a deal to spend USD 1 billion looking for oil in the Black Sea. In return, Rosneft will be able to purchase stakes in some Exxon projects in the U.S., including deep-water Gulf of Mexico exploration and onshore oil fields in Texas. That would mark the first time a state-controlled Russian oil company acquired ownership stakes in U.S. oil and gas assets.

The deal, signed in the presence of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at his vacation residence on the Black Sea, is a big win for Exxon as it competes with other international players for increasingly scarce, large, untapped oil deposits. It is also an embarrassment for London-based BP, which tried to negotiate a deal for the same Kara Sea acreage earlier this year. That deal fell apart in May amid a legal battle with BP's partners in its existing Russian venture. Other companies, such as Chevron Corp., Total SA and Statoil ASA, were also angling to grab the Arctic acreage.

MRC

(Financial Times) -- Bailiffs searched the Moscow offices of BP in Moscow on Wednesday, adding to the UK-based oil major's woes in Russia a day after ExxonMobil stole a march on it by signing a historic Arctic exploration deal with Russian oil major Rosneft.

BP officials said the search was related to a lawsuit by minority shareholders in TNK-BP who are suing for USD 3 bln over the collapse of a similar tie-up between BP and Rosneft earlier this year.

Andrei Prokhorov, a Russian businessman who filed the suit in July, alleged that two BP executives who sit on the board of TNK-BP must have known about the UK group's negotiations with Rosneft, and their failure to inform TNK-BP caused damage to the company.

The lawsuit was upheld by a court in Siberia's Tyumen region in July. BP has said the minority shareholders were pursuing a ⌠groundless action that it would vigorously contest.

BP on Wednesday said it believed there ⌠are no legitimate grounds for the raid this morning. The offices being raided belong to BP Exploration Operating Company, a subsidiary which ⌠has no connection with the process in Tyumen and is not engaged in any shareholder dispute. The company added that it would ⌠defend its interest vigorously and believed there are ⌠no grounds for damages.

MRC