The US to broaden sanctions against Iran

(ICIS) -- The US said on Monday that it was broadening sanctions against Iran to pressure the Tehran regime to end its suspected nuclear weapons programme, including a new US boycott of foreign firms doing business with Iranian petrochemicals entities. Under the sanctions announced by the White House and State Department, non-US firms that do business with the Iranian petrochemicals sector would be subject to unspecified penalties and possibly barred from doing business with the US.

US companies have long been barred from doing business with Iran. Successive US administrations have been steadily broadening sanctions against the Tehran government in an effort to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme.

The new sanctions announced on Monday come in the wake of findings issued earlier this month by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Tehran was advancing steps to build nuclear weapons.
In a statement from the White House, President Barack Obama said that the US was taking additional steps, in cooperation with Canada and the UK, ⌠to further isolate and penalise Iran for its refusal to live up to its international obligations regarding its nuclear programme. ⌠New sanctions target for the first time Iran's petrochemical sector, Obama said, ⌠prohibiting the provision of goods, services and technology to this sector. Obama said that the US would impose unspecified penalties ⌠against any person or entity that engages in such activity with the Iranian petrochemicals industry.
The sanctions announced on Monday also expand earlier provisions designed to impede and perhaps cripple Iran's oil and natural gas sectors.


Perspectives of development of the polymers markets, pricing issues and other important aspects will be discussed at The Polymers Summit-2011, which will be held in Moscow on November 30, 2011 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Summit is organized by MRC with the support of ICIS. The main idea of the Summit is to find a "the golden mean" between producers and converters. When producers receive exactly such margin of production, which helps them to invest in production expansion in order to substitute polymers imports, and the converters receive such price of feedstock that helps them to compete imported finished products. The Summit site gives an access to the live video of the Summit, speakers' presentations, as well as opportunities to ask questions or make appointments to any Summit partcipant.

MRC

(PlastEurope) -- Cristal Global (Jeddah/Saudi Arabia) is planning to build a TiO2 slag plant in Yanbu/Saudi Arabia. The company has selected Outotec (Espoo/Finland) to build the plant, which will process 800,000 t/y of ilmenite ore to produce 500,000 t/y of 85% TiO2, with 235,000 t/y of high purity pig iron as a valuable co-product. The plant will be constructed on a turnkey basis, and is expected to become operational in Q4 2013. It will be scalable to a maximum production of 1m t/y of TiO2 slag, Cristal said. The company signed a letter of intent for the project with Outotec on 31 October 2011.

Perspectives of development of the polymers markets, pricing issues and other important aspects will be discussed at The Polymers Summit-2011, which will be held in Moscow on November 30, 2011 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Summit is organized by MRC with the support of ICIS. The main idea of the Summit is to find a "the golden mean" between producers and converters. When producers receive exactly such margin of production, which helps them to invest in production expansion in order to substitute polymers imports, and the converters receive such price of feedstock that helps them to compete imported finished products. The Summit site gives an access to the live video of the Summit, speakers' presentations, as well as opportunities to ask questions or make appointments to any Summit partcipant.

MRC

(Plastemart) -- SCG Chemicals and Barito Pacific are seeking US$500 mln (Bt15.6 bln) to expand ethylene capacity at Chandra Asri Perochemical (CAP) to 800,000-1000,000 tpa from the current 550,000 tpa. Production capacity for polyethylene will be increased from 340,000 tpa, polypropylene from 480,000 tonss and styrene monomer from 320,000tpa.

CAP is Indonesia's largest petrochemical company in which Barito owns the largest shareholding at 70%. SCG Chemicals, the biggest unit of Siam Cement Group, Thailand's largest industrial conglomerate, in September acquired 30% of CAP for US$442 mln.

The two are considering a public offering in the Indonesian stock market and borrowing from banks with the expectation of making a decision early next year so that the increased capacity can come on stream in 2013.

Perspectives of development of the polymers markets, pricing issues and other important aspects will be discussed at The Polymers Summit-2011, which will be held in Moscow on November 30, 2011 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Summit is organized by MRC with the support of ICIS. The main idea of the Summit is to find a "the golden mean" between producers and converters. When producers receive exactly such margin of production, which helps them to invest in production expansion in order to substitute polymers imports, and the converters receive such price of feedstock that helps them to compete imported finished products. The Summit site gives an access to the live video of the Summit, speakers' presentations, as well as opportunities to ask questions or make appointments to any Summit partcipant.

MRC

(ICIS) -- Major Chinese importers are seeking alternative sources of polyethylene (PE) resins as supply from Iran may be disrupted after the US imposed new sanctions on the Middle Eastern country over its nuclear programme, industry sources said on Tuesday.

⌠We have to find alternatives to our [Iranian] suppliers. It is forbidden for China to export [product] to Iran because of the sanctions. Sooner or later, Iran will be forbidden to export [product] into China, said an eastern China-based importer. A sizeable chunk of China's PE imports is at risk because of growing international pressure to isolate Iran.

In the first nine months of 2011, Iran exported 228,780 tonnes of low density polyethylene (LDPE) film and 305,000 tonnes of all high density polyethylene (HDPE) grades to China. Iran's LDPE supply accounted for 21.4% of China's total imports of the material, while the HDPE supply has a 12.0% share to total imports of the polymer for the period, China Customs data showed.

The impact on supply will be most felt on the HDPE injection and blow moulding grades given that there are few such suppliers in the market, said a second Chinese importer. ⌠LDPE film supply is currently still outstripping the demand, so even if Iranian goods are out of the picture, the supply availability will still meet the demand, the importer added.

A third Chinese importer said it has reduced its monthly LDPE film import volumes from Iran by more than half this year from 15,000 tonnes/month in 2010, and is likely to cut import volumes further in 2012.


Perspectives of development of the polymers markets, pricing issues and other important aspects will be discussed at The Polymers Summit-2011, which will be held in Moscow on November 30, 2011 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Summit is organized by MRC with the support of ICIS. The main idea of the Summit is to find a "the golden mean" between producers and converters. When producers receive exactly such margin of production, which helps them to invest in production expansion in order to substitute polymers imports, and the converters receive such price of feedstock that helps them to compete imported finished products. The Summit site gives an access to the live video of the Summit, speakers' presentations, as well as opportunities to ask questions or make appointments to any Summit partcipant.

MRC

(ICIS-MRC) -- A member of the Board of Directors of Alta Profile Sergey Teteryuk and General manager of Alta Profile Valeriy Kulesh confirmed their participation at The Polymers Summit-2011, which will be held on November 30, 2011 in The Ritz-Carlton Moscow. The Summit is organized by MRC (Market Report) and supported by ICIS.

The main idea of the Summit is to find a "golden mean" between producers and converters. When the margin of producers could help them to invest in the expansion of production to replace imports of polymers, and converters could have the price of feedstock materials to be able to compete with imported finished products.

Among others, the Summit participants will focus on pricing issues in the polymers marekt, current situation in the markets of PET, PVC, the surplus of PP, the cost-effective use of resources. The Summit program is formed interactively on the basis of the questions to the speakers. The reports will be short, the speakers will mostly focus on communicating with colleagues. It is possible to ask questions, to appoint or postpone meetings with colleagues on the site of the Summit. The registration on a site is free. At the moment there are 159 registered users of the site, who represent major Russian and foreign petrochemical companies.

MRC