Total SA's overhaul of its refining and petrochemicals businesses isn't in preparation for a sale

(Bloomberg) -- Total SA's overhaul of its refining, petrochemicals and marketing businesses isn't in preparation for a sale, Chief Executive Officer Christophe de Margerie said. ⌠No, there is no planned IPO or sale, he said at a briefing to discuss the merger of the refining and petrochemicals divisions and creation of a separate fuel- marketing operation. ⌠One can never say never, but our biggest preoccupation is to make this tool better performing. Total, Europe's biggest refiner, said there won't be job cuts following the reorganization.

⌠There is urgency because the market is bad. The European market is not growing, Margerie said today, adding that refining margins were negative in August and early September and have now climbed to about USD 22 a ton.

De Margerie raised a profit target for the refining and marketing business between 2010 and 2014.

The aim of the plan is to ⌠unlock value for the activities, even in European and U.S. markets where demand for fuel products is decreasing, he said. ⌠I think we can make refining and chemicals profitable in Europe.

Europe's third-largest oil company has reduced refining through the closure of its plant near Dunkirk in France, capacity reduction at Normandy and the sale of its 49 percent stake in Spain's Cia. Espanola de Petroleos SA. Total is also trying to sell its Lindsey plant in the U.K.

MRC

(MRC) -- This year, Ukrainian producer Linik increased the output of polypropylene (PP) by 29% to 70,200 tonnes. September was rather unsuccessful for Linik, though the company plans to increase PP output in October, according to MRC ScanPlast.

In September, Ukrainian Linik reduced PP output to 5,500 tonnes that was 28% less than in August. A week-long shutdown for turnaround as well as the accident in late September resulted in a decline of PP output. As a consequence, the Ukrainian producer cut PP supply to the domestic market at the end of the month.

In general, over the first nine months, Linik increased PP production volume to 70,200 tonnes. For comparison, during this period last year Linik's total PP output made 54,560 tonnes. Such a low production rate last year was due to May-June turnaround of all the production facilities, including oil refinery.

In October, the company plans to increase PP production up to 9,000 tonnes.

MRC

(Plasteurope) -- Chinese chemical giant Sinopec (Beijing) has begun work on a CNY 18bn (EUR 2.1bn) coal-based petrochemicals and polyolefins complex in Zhijin, Guizhou province. The complex will include a 600,000 t/y methanol-to-olefins unit, a 300,000 t/y LDPE plant and a 300,000 t/y PP plant. The timing of the project was not disclosed.

The Chinese group also announced that it had commissioned a coal-to-liquids pilot plant in Zhenhai in August, a project it carried out in cooperation with Syntroleum Corp (Tulsa, Oklahoma).

MRC

(Reuters) - Formosa Petrochemical Corp. will shut a 180,000 barrels per day (bpd) crude distillation unit and two secondary units for planned maintenance at its 540,000 bpd refinery in Taiwan from December. The shutdown of the refinery could place some pressure on gas oil and kerosene stocks as December is usually the peak demand period for the fuel as the region's top oil consumers China and Japan use it as heating fuel for winter.

The maintenance at CDU No. 2, a vacuum distillation unit (VDU) of 80,000 bpd capacity and a 52,000 bpd VGO hydrotreating unit, will last for 40 days from the start of December, a company spokesman said on Friday.

Formosa restarted a third CDU at its refinery early September after the refinery was shut for safety reasons following a fire in end-July at a secondary unit that damaged some infrastructure, including power cables.

Formosa has also restarted the second of two residual fluid catalytic crackers (RFCC) this week after a prolonged shutdown since the end-July fire. Both RFCCs are of equal capacity at 84,000 bpd.

MRC

(Solvay) -- Solvay announced that MTP HPJV (Thailand) Ltd, its hydrogen peroxide joint venture with The Dow Chemical Company (Dow), has successfully commissioned the largest hydrogen peroxide (HP) plant in the world. The production process of the new plant in Map Ta Phut, Thailand, is based on Solvay's proprietary, high-yield hydrogen peroxide technology that enables such unique, large-scale plants to benefit from advantages in both specific investment and production costs. Solvay's HP technology also brings significant environmental advantages such as reductions in energy consumption and in waste water.

The plant has a capacity of over 330,000 tons per year of hydrogen peroxide at 100% concentration and serves mainly as a captive raw material source for the manufacture of propylene oxide (PO) by Dow and Siam Cement Group (SCG). Propylene oxide is primarily used to produce propylene glycol, polyurethanes and glycol ethers. It is the second world-scale HP plant dedicated to PO production, the first being the 230,000 tons HP plant (Antwerp, Belgium) commissioned at the end of 2008, which serves a Dow and BASF HPPO plant. Producing PO with HP offers unique and sizeable economic and environmental benefits compared with conventional propylene oxide production technologies.


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