French strikes cost ┬200-400m/day, fuel shortages continue

(ICIS) -- Industrial action in France, which has crippled the country's crude supplies and refining operations, continued on Monday as the government announced the disruption was costing the country's economy between ┬200-400m ($281-563m) a day.

As of Monday, about a quarter of France's service stations were still empty.
Meanwhile, around 200 protestors seized control and blocked an oil depot at Fos-sur-Mer, according to news agency AFP.

The shutdowns have seriously affected downstream users, with a variety of chemical producers suffering from a lack of refined feedstock. Some producers have begun to cut chemical production or declared force majeure (FM) on products as availability diminishes.

Total announced it had now completely stopped production at all of its French refineries at Grandpuits, Donges, La Mede, Gonfreville and Feyzin, due to crude supply issues and strike action taken by workers.

In addition, ExxonMobil's merged Port Jerome-Gravenchon refinery and Fos-sur-Mer plant, LyondellBasell's refinery at Berre L'Etang, INEOS's Lavera plant, and Petroplus's refineries at Petit Couronne and Reichstett, were all either operating at minimum throughput levels or shutting production altogether.

MRC

(Plastics News) -- Vietnam has lined up nine potential investment projects through to 2025, while six proposed plants are seeking foreign investments, according to Phan Minh Quoc Binh, a director at the PetroVietnam Research.

But even if the projects all move forward, the IndoChinese country, though endowed with significant hydrocarbon resources, would face supply shortages. The country's petrochemical demand is expected to reach 5.4 million metric tons per year by 2020, based on 8.6 percent annual projected growth. If all planned and proposed projects are completed by 2020, the domestic supply would only cover 60 percent of the demand, Binh said.

Vietnam plans to set up the second petrochemical complex, comprising of 1 million metric tons per year of polyethylene capacity, 500,000 metric tons of polypropylene and 400,000 metric tons of PVC to meet the domestic demand until 2025.

In 2012, the 110,000 metric ton/year PS capacity is to be completed at Polystyrene Vietnam as well as the 100,000 metric ton/year PVC plant at TPC Vina in 2013.

Nevertheless, Vietnam would continue to import most petrochemical products over the next 10 years.

MRC

(European Plastics News) -- Austria-based plastics pipe producer Pipelife is withdrawing from the Iberian market by closing production and trading activities in Spain and Portugal.

The company is reportedly closing its subsidiaries in the area because of a dramatic fall in demand, with no indication of a recovery in the medium term.

Pipelife is headquartered at Wiener Neudorf in Austria, has operations in 29 countries and employs 2,450 people. The company is a joint venture between Wienerberger of Austria and Solvay of Belgium and generated sales of around ┬699m in 2009.

MRC

(European Plastics News) -- South Korean electronics giant Samsung Electronics is reported to be boosting the supply of raw material for its manufacture of computers in Hungary.

The company is constructing a new plastics granulate plant in the Hungarian city of Tatabanya, according to the national news agency MTI.

The new facility is expected to employ almost 100 when it is operating. The plant is due to produce up to 20,000 tpa of the plastics raw material which Samsung will use to mould components for laptops and monitors.

Samsung's latest investment will be financed jointly by Samsung Chemical Hungary and Unicredit Leasing, reported MTI.

Samsung Electronics also aims to get greener in its consumption of plastics raw materials. Across all products, it currently employs almost 16% post industrial plastic and just 0.2% post consumer plastic waste. But, the group has set itself an ambitious target of 25% recycled plastic content out of all plastics used by the year 2025.

MRC

(European Plastics News) -- Europe's leading body for plastics convertors, the Brussels based European Plastics Convertors Association (EuPC), has urged ⌠distressed plastics convertors to challenge their raw material suppliers in court if they are faced with suspicious declarations of force majeure.

EuPC's managing director, Alexandre Dangis, said: "The frequency of force majeures we have recently experienced is unprecedented in our working life-time. Several raw material suppliers have sailed very close to the wind legally and if the tests of 'Unpredictability' and 'Irresistibility' are applied many of these force majeure declarations are highly questionable. These really need to be put to the test as only the courts can form a view."

EuPC certainly acknowledges that highly unusual factors have affected raw material supply in the last two years. Dangis added that in some parts of the EU some speciality materials are simply not available.

MRC