PTT Global Chemical to start trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand

(ICIS) -- PTT Global Chemical, the new flagship petrochemical company of Thailand's oil and gas giant PTT, can weather a second round of global recession better given its size and armed with a competitive mixed-feedstock production structure, analysts said on Thursday.

The company, created from the merger PTT Chemical (PTTCH) and PTT Aromatics (PTTAR), will start trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) on 21 October, marking the full integration of two PTT affiliates.

With an estimated market capitalisation of more than baht (Bt) 300bn ($10bn), PTT Global Chemical will be the eighth largest listed company on the Thai bourse, analysts said. It will also become the only company in the world to integrate its olefins and aromatics chemical chains with gas-based and liquid-based feedstock sources, said Pongtham Danwungderm, a Bangkok-based analyst at KGI Securities.

MRC

(Plastemart) -- State-owned Petroleos del Peru (Petroperu), is in talks with petrochemicals company Braskem SA, as it explores signing a letter of intent in order to carry out a technical and economic analysis of the viability of a petrochemical project in Peru.

Last year Braskem signed an agreement with Brazil's oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Petroperu to assess the feasibility of setting up a large scale polyethylene production project in southern Peru using natural gas.

MRC

(ICIS) -- Rockwood Holdings's CEO expects no upturn in the US housing market next year or the year after, he said on Wednesday. ⌠We are not optimistic about that for 2012 or 2013, said Seth Ghasemi, chief executive at the US-based specialty chemicals firm, in an earnings conference call.
Rockwood makes titanium dioxide (TiO2), a major ingredient in architectural paints and coatings and considered a good chemical indicator of the health of the US housing market.

Housing, in turn, is a large end-market for such chemical products as plastic pipe, insulation, paints and coatings, adhesives, roofing materials and synthetic fibres.

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) estimates that each new home built represents $16,000 (┬11,520) worth of chemicals and derivatives used in the structure or in the production of component materials.

While Rockwood's third-quarter sales of TiO2 rose 31%, Ghasemi said the jump stemmed from increased pricing because of higher raw material costs. Actual TiO2 volumes declined 17% from low demand.


MRC

(Bloomberg) -- Kuwait Petroleum Corp. offered to sell naphtha cargoes to Asia from December to November at almost double the premium of supplies for the same period this year, according to two people involved in the negotiations.

The Kuwait City-based company, the largest Middle East exporter of refined oil products to Asia, is offering Full-Range naphtha for December 2011 to November 2012 at $23.50 a metric ton above benchmark prices, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are confidential. The state-owned company has been selling cargoes at $12 a ton over quotes for December 2010 to November 2011 and most recently agreed to receive an $18.50 premium for shipments from August 2011 to July 2012.

MRC

(Arabian oil and gas) -- Alujain Corporation said that its subsidiary National Petrochemical industrial Company (NatPet) has resumed operations at its polypropylene located in Yanbu Industrial city, following the technical problem that hit the plant on October 12. The company announced earlier this month that a technical defect in the dehydrogenation unit in polypropylene complex was the reason behind the shutdown.

Another technical outage caused the a net loss of US$24m equal to the production of 16,000 tonnes of polypropylene, in late September.

This is the third time this year that the company has faced technical issues. The company also announced earlier this year that its polypropylene plant faced a technical problem at the dehydrogenation unit on the 18th of January, with repair work taking five days. As a consequence of this shutdown, NatPet failed to produce 3,500 tonne of polypropylene worth $5 million.

MRC