Petronas refinery project progresses in Malaysia

(refiningandpetrochemicals) -- Malaysia's state-owned oil and gas company Petronas has announced that its proposed Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project is progressing as scheduled.

RAPID's proposed refinery will have a capacity of 300,000 barrels per standard day and will supply feedstock for RAPID's petrochemical complex.

Supply also includes gasoline and diesel that will meet European specifications.The project aims to capitalise on the growing need for specialty chemicals and to meet the demand for petroleum and commodity petrochemical products in the Asia Pacific region by 2016.

A detailed feasibility study on the proposed project was undertaken, and was completed in October 2011. Recently, Petronas has entered into a heads of agreement with BASF to jointly own, develop, construct and operate production facilities for specialty chemicals and plants for precursor materials within the RAPID complex.

A final investment decision for the project is scheduled in the middle of 2013.

MRC

(refiningandpetrochemicals) -- Russian oil company TNK-BP Holding, the joint venture between BP and a group of Russian oil investors, is considering mothballing or selling its oil refinery in the Ukraine.

The company said it will undertake a radical restructuring of its operations in the country due to losses at Lisichansk Refinery, known as Linik. TNK-BP Ukraine reported a loss of USD68m in 2010 and USD23m in 2011.

The move will see Linik singled out as a separate business with TNK-BP concentrating on its marketing and retail operations in the country.Production at Linik was halted in March for repairs for an indefinite period of time.

Linik has refined nearly 25% of Ukrainian supplies in 2009 which were down to 13% in 2011 because of cheaper imports from Belarus. The reorganized business structure is expected to be approved by this May and be effective from July.

MRC

(refiningandpetrochemicals) -- State-owned State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) will commission the planned new oil gas processing & petrochemical complex worth USD14bn near Baku on a phased basis between 2017 and 2020.

SOCAR's oil and gas and petrochemical project department deputy head Shamil Hakimov told News.Az the complex will consist of an oil refinery, liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing plant, petrochemical plant and power plant.

"The complex will be realized stage by stage. The first stage envisages speeding up work on the gas processing plant," Hakimov added.

The gas processing plant would be the first to be operational in 2017 with the complex being completed in 2020.The gas processing plant would have a capacity of 15bn cubic meters per year while the oil refinery will process 10m tons of crude oil per year.

Nearly 70% of feedstock will be derived from the Shirvan, Oil Rocks and Surakhani fields, while the rest of the 30% will be Azeri Light and additional feedstock could be sourced from Russian and Kazakh oil.

MRC

(Reuters) -- Tuapse refinery, owned by Russia's top crude producer Rosneft, is set to double refinery runs in May up to 700,000 tonnes a month after launching new crude distillation unit (CDU).

"The column (CDU) is ready, we will double the loadings starting from May, up to 650,000 - 700,000 tonnes," a source said. Rosneft declined an immediate comment.

So far, Tuapse refinery at the Black Sea has processed 4.5 million tonnes of crude oil a year. The new unit will boost the capacity to 12 million tonnes, making it one of Rosneft's biggest refineries.
MRC

(finance) -- KBR announced today it will design and construct an ethylene furnace for INEOS Olefins & Polymers USA (INEOS) that upon commissioning will provide the highest achievable ethylene yields in the industry. The executed agreements with INEOS include provision of a technology license, engineering, procurement, supply of equipment and materials, and construction of the furnace.

The furnace design will add 465 million pounds per year of furnace production capacity to the INEOS Chocolate Bayou Works Olefins Complex in Alvin, Texas.

This furnace will use KBR's high-performance Selective Cracking and Optimum Recovery (SCORETM) ethylene technology and process NGL feedstocks. The furnace will also include KBR's latest generation Ultra Low NOx burner technology and a Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) bed to reduce emissions of nitrous oxides.
MRC