Baytown plant will be giant for plastic resin

(downstreamtoday) -- Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. is adding to the petrochemical party. The Woodlands-based company on Monday announced it would build in Baytown the world's largest plant, by capacity, for making a key component of plastic resin: 1-hexene.

The plant, which Chevron Phillips will begin building this year, is scheduled to start operations in the first quarter of 2014 and have an annual production capacity of 250,000 metric tons, or 551 million pounds, according to a company announcement.

The plant is the latest industry project aimed at taking advantage of newly tapped supplies of natural gas liquids that are expected to be abundant and cheap amid a boom in production from shale.

The chemical 1-hexene, derived from ethylene, is used to manufacture polyethylene, which in turn is commonly converted into film, pipe, detergent bottles, and food and beverage containers.

Ethylene itself is derived from ethane, for which production has grown substantially in the United States because of advances in drilling techniques that have tapped into large, cheap supplies of natural gas liquids.
MRC

(Reuters) -- Gazprom's Q311 earnings fell to RUB156bn (USD5.14bn), a 3% fall from Q310. This is the first 2011 quarter that saw a year-on-year contraction in net profit. Despite a 22% growth in gas sales, the company's returns were hit by RUB148bn (USD4.89bn) worth of financial expense, a 228% increase on Q310, mostly caused by foreign exchange (FX) losses on debt issued for the company's capital-intensive investments. The company had increased its net debt by 20% to RUB1.04trn (USD34.37bn). Despite these underwhelming results, the company beat expectations with a net profit attributable to shareholders of RUB152bn (USD5.02bn) against a RUB150bn (USD4.94bn).

The company's revenues were however boosted by its refining business, which thanks to secure feedstock at a time when European refiners were struggling to compensate for the interruption in Libyan light crude supplies, grew by 43% y-o-y. Gazprom also benefited from successful diversification into the power sector, which bolstered its bottom line.
MRC

(downstreamtoday) -- After focusing on LNG and GTL, Qatar is now aiming to spend USD25 billion to double its gas-derived petrochemical output by 2020

Qatar's giant gas reserves have transformed the fortunes of the small Arabian peninsula state. The country has, by some metrics already become the richest place on earth.

Having mastered the upstream business, attentions are now being turned to its downstream dreams, a logical next step to further monetise its hydrocarbon riches, and diversify its economy beyond the cash-for-gas model.

"In the hydrocarbon area, we are now focusing on petrochemicals," says Abdulrahman al-Shaibi, managing director of the Qatar Financial Centre Authority. "We will spend USD25 billion on creating additional petrochemical industries as an important feedstock for small and medium-sized companies," al-Shaibi adds.

As part of its ambitious petrochemical programme, Qatar aims to further expand its throughput by 2020. "We aim to more than double our annual petrochemical production capacity from currrent 9.2 million tonnes to 23 million tonnes by 2020," says Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, minister of energy and industry, managing director and chairman of the board of Qatar Petroleum (QP).
MRC

(downstreamtoday) -- In January this year the company declared itself insolvent and went into administration. O'Malley is back in the United States, pursuing another project in the same industry.

"He was trying to replicate the business model of independent refining in Europe based on his prior success in the U.S.," said
Gergely Varkonyi, analyst at Deutsche Bank. "O'Malley underestimated the challenges in European refining restructuring."
Shockwaves from the collapse of Petroplus spread beyond the oil industry as the closure of its Petit-Couronne refinery on the Seine became an issue in the French election campaign.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, struggling to hold onto power as unemployment climbs, brokered a deal for Shell to supply the plant and allow it to reopen at least temporarily.

In Britain, panic buying of gasoline broke out in January as motorists feared disruption to supplies when the Coryton plant came under threat - although it uniquely among the five Petroplus sites has kept refining without a break.

MRC

(canplastics) -- In the past nine months, several dozen Canadian plastics processing companies have signed onto Operation Clean Sweep (OCS), a U.S.-developed series of rules for pellet containment.

Introduced in Canada in July 2011, OCS is one of the initiatives of the North American Plastics Alliance (NAPA), an organization comprised of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA), SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association (SPI), and the Plastics Division of the American Chemistry Council (ACC).

SPI launched OCS in 1992 and now partners with ACC and CPIA to help every plastic resin handling operation implement what the Toronto-based CPIA describes as ⌠good housekeeping and pellet containment practices that result in zero pellet loss as well as keep the environment clean and save resources. All registrants at the NPE2012 trade show in Orlando, Fla., are getting an OCS pledge form, and the three organizations are working together to promote participation throughout the NPE trade show.

⌠Pellet containment efforts have increased six fold with new Canadian manufacturers participating in the program, the CPIA said. ⌠The three organizations are also holding joint webinars to promote the program throughout North America.
MRC