Oil India and IOC buy 30% stake in shale gas asset in Colorado

(plastemart) -- Oil India and IOC have acquired 30% stake in Carrizo Oil & Gas’ Niobrara shale gas asset in Colorado for USD82.5 mln. OIL will hold 20% stake, while IOC will hold 10% stake in the asset.

Headquartered at Houston, Carrizo is engaged in the exploration, development, exploitation, and production of oil and natural gas, primarily in the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, the Barnett Shale in North Texas, the Marcellus Shale in Appalachia, the Niobrara Formation in Colorado, the Utica Shale in Eastern Ohio, and in proven onshore trends along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast regions. Carrizo is also actively developing its oil discovery known as the Huntington Field in the UK North Sea.

In 2011, GailL India through its US subsidiary Gail Global (USA) Inc. acquired 20% stake in Carrizo Oil and Gas’s Eagle Ford shale acreage. As MRC reported earlier, the company had signed a 20-year deal to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Singapore unit of Russias state-owned gas giant, Gazprom. GAIL India was also planning to buy stake in the 10 mln ton LNG plant at Vladivostok on the Pacific coast in Russia.

In 2010, Reliance Industries entered into a shale gas JV with US-based Carrizo Oil and Gas for a 60% stake in Marcellus Shale acreage in Central and Northeast Pennsylvania for USD392 mln. RIL had also bought a 40% stake in Atlas Energy Inc's Marcellus Shale acreage for USD1.7 bln in April,’10.

Around 32,500 trillion cu. ft (tcf) of shale gas reserves have been identified globally. The US is the leading producer of shale gas. As MRC informed earlier, with the development of new shale gas resources, the US petrochemical industry is announcing significant expansions of US petrochemical capacity. Dow Chemical, Formosa Plastics, and Chevron Phillips Chemical have recently unveiled their expansion plans in North America ondeposits in the Marcellus Shale Formation in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
MRC

(plastemart) -- Sahara Petrochemical Co has inked a 3 year medium-term revolving credit facility with Saudi Investment Bank for 400 million riyals (USD107 mln). The facility is to give standby support both to the company's working capital and to aid future investments.

The Jubail-based producer makes basic petrochemicals including propylene, acrylic acid, ethylene, low and high density polyethylene, caustic chlorine and ethylene dichloride.

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Import of PVC to Ukraine in September fell to 8,600 tonnes. Over the nine months of this year, total imports of suspension amounted to 63,400 tonnes, down 32% year on year, according to MRC DataScope report.

In September, the total volume of external supplies of PVC to the Ukrainian market fell to 8,600 tonnes, from 10,900 tonnes in August. Expectedly, the main decline in imports fell on the resin from the U.S.

Last month, imports of the U.S. resin decreased to 2,000 tonnes, from 5,500 tonnes in August. The rise in export prices of the U.S. PVC in July-August forced many Ukrainian companies to limit the volume of purchases.

After stops on scheduled maintenance at the end of July - early August European makers increased their export quotas for the Ukrainian market. As a result, imports of resin from Europe in September amounted to 6,600 tonnes, from about 5,100 tonnes in August.

In the whole, over the nine months, the total imports of PVC to Ukraine amounted to about 63,400 tonnes, down 32% year on year. The stoppage of PVC production of Karpatneftehim in September will provide quite high volumes of PVC imports in October and November.

MRC

(apic-online) -- Jacobs Engineering has received a contract from Malaysia's Petronas to develop a basic engineering package for three sulfur recovery units (SRUs) as part of the Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (Rapid) project in Johor, Malaysia.

Jacobs is licensing its Superclaus technology to Petronas for the three SRUs. The technology offers "highly valued performance features in areas such as reliability, sulfur recovery levels, sulfur emissions reduction and simple continuous operation," Jacobs noted.

Petronas' USD20-billion Rapid project includes a 300,000-b/d refinery, a naphtha cracker to produce about 3-million t/y of ethylene, propylene, C4 and C5 olefins, and several downstream petrochemical units.
MRC

(apic-online) -- Several crackers have returned from scheduled or unscheduled maintenance shutdowns recently in Europe, a factor which is expected to bring some relief to the ethylene market, where a scarcity of materials pushed prices higher last week. However, this development may put extra pressure on spot propylene prices, which have already been on a downward trend since the middle of September.

Borealis restarted its Porvoo complex last week following a six week scheduled maintenance shutdown. The complex includes a cracker with 390,000 tons/year of ethylene and 240,000 tons/year of propylene capacity. According to market sources, all plants were in the restart process last week and were already partly running.

Repsol also restarted its 250,000 tons/year cracker in Puertollano, Spain last week after a small fire hit its production in June. The restart date remained unclear for a long time, although it is now reportedly running at full rates. LyondellBasell was also planning to resume operations at its 735,000 tons/year cracker at Wessling, Germany on October 9. The site was shut in late August for maintenance.

Exxon/Shell’s joint venture cracker at Mossmorran, UK was also slated to restart before October 12 following the shutdown in late August for a scheduled turnaround for six weeks. In addition, Sabic was reported to have resumed operations at its Olefins 4 cracker at Geleen, the Netherlands last week after a brief shutdown at the beginning of October stemming from technical problems. Olefins 4 has an ethylene capacity of around 800,000 tons/year.

Accordingly, players believe that the return of these major crackers will ease monomer supplies across Europe. This may make itself felt on the pricing side as well. In the spot ethylene market, tight availability was still the major concern pushing prices higher last week regardless of the weak demand from the downstream side. In the spot propylene market, the situation was just the opposite. Poor downstream demand dominated the market and pushed prices lower despite the insufficient supplies. Now that supplies are likely to improve, a further softening is anticipated for spot propylene prices.
MRC