Vietnam government reassures lawmakers on Thai PTT mega-refinery project

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Vietnamese government will thoroughly evaluate state-owned Thai PTT's proposed mega-refinery and tightly manage the development of other refinery and petrochemical projects in the country, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung told the National Assembly, reported Plastemart.

The statement was in response to a lawmaker's concern that regional governments appeared to be on a "campaign" to build too many projects.

PTT expects to complete a feasibility study of the proposed 660,000 bpd project in the central province of Binh Dinh in April.

Dung said most of the proposals for new Vietnamese refineries have been approved in principle and were included in the country's 2020-25 development plan for the refining and petrochemical sector, which was released in 2011.

However, he has asked the municipal government of the southern Can Tho City to consider revoking the investment license of the much-delayed 2 mln tpa Can Tho project. The sponsors, Vietnam's Vien Dong Investment and Trade Corp., are financially unable to move the project forward, the prime minister said.

Dung said Vietnam's sole 130,000 bpd Dung Quat refinery in the central province of Quang Ngai has shown its effectiveness. As MRC wrote previously, Russia's Gazprom Neft plans to acquire a 49% share in state-owned PetroVietnam's Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical, which controls and manages the Dung Quat refinery. The two parties are currently in price negotiations.
MRC

Westlake Chemical announces quarterly dividend

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The board of directors of Westlake Chemical Corporation declared on Friday, November 22, 2013, a dividend of 22.5 cents per share. The dividend will be payable on December 20, 2013, to stockholders of record on December 6, 2013, said MarketWatch.

This is the 37(th) successive quarterly dividend that Westlake has declared since completing its initial public offering in August 2004.

As MRC wrote before, Westlake Chemical has agreed to acquire the PVC pipe and fittings unit of Compagnie de Saint-Gobain SA's CertainTeed Corp. for USD175 million. CertainTeed's pipe and foundation group produces PVC pipe and fittings for municipalities, water wells, mining, agriculture and irrigation.

Westlake Chemical Corporation is a manufacturer and supplier of petrochemicals, polymers and building products with headquarters in Houston, Texas. The company's range of products includes: ethylene, polyethylene, styrene, propylene, caustic, VCM, PVC resin and PVC building products including pipe and specialty components, windows and fence.
MRC

Cheap US gas drives Formosa Plastics expansion

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Formosa Plastics is seeking United States permits for a USD2 billion expansion of its Texas operations as cheaper natural gas prices make US production more competitive, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The company asked federal and state environmental regulators to approve plans for an ethane cracker unit and downstream derivatives, Formosa Plastics Vice Chairman Susan Wang said in an interview. She is visiting the United States as part of a business delegation led by former Taiwan Vice President Vincent Siew.

The investment is bigger than was previously planned by Formosa Plastics as of February 2012, when it said it would spend USD1.7 billion to build two factories and a polyethylene plastics plant in Texas.

One of the business delegation’s key aims is shoring up United States support for Taiwan’s participation in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional trade deal the will cover the United States and 11 other nations, an area with about USD28 trillion in combined annual economic output. Taiwan is seeking to join the talks, which don’t include China.

Formosa Plastics’s Wang said the Taipei-based company expects to receive the environmental permits for an expansion at its Point Comfort facility, about 200 km southwest of Houston, sometime within the next year. Construction can begin immediately thereafter, she said.

Environmental regulations in the United States are "quite reasonable," Wang said. The hurdles in Texas are a shortage of skilled labor, due to the number of competing facilities that need workers, and the relatively high cost of shipping products by rail in the United States, she said.

In the US, the group owns petrochemical plants, plastic processing facilities and natural gas wells. Last year, it applied to boost capacity in two Texas chemical plants.


Wang said Formosa Plastics is "at a crossroads" in determining whether to build or invest in an ethylene plant in China. Taiwan last month lifted the ban on investing in Chinese ethylene plants, also known as “naphtha crackers” for the use of the petroleum distillate naphtha. China has yet to ease its rules on ethylene investments across the Taiwan Strait.

Formosa Petrochemical is involved primarily in the business of refining crude oil, selling refined petroleum products and producing and selling olefins (including ethylene, propylene, butadiene and BTX) from its naphtha cracking operations. Formosa Petrochemical is also the largest olefins producer in Taiwan and its olefins products are mostly sold to companies within the Formosa Group. Among the company"s chemical products are paraxylene (PX), phenyl ethylene, acetone and pure terephthalic acid (PTA). The company"s plastic products include acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) resins, polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP) and panlite (PC).
MRC

Russia to end Gazprom monopoly on LNG exports

МОSCOW (MRC) -- Russian lawmakers voted to end state-controlled OAO Gazprom monopoly on exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as competitors plan to build plants to produce the chilled fuel, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The bill was passed in the last two of three readings by lawmakers in the lower house of parliament on Friday. Once signed into law, it will allow OAO Novatek and OAO Rosneft to ship tankers of the fuel to foreign markets as Russia seeks to double its share of the global LNG market by 2020.

President Vladimir Putin in June called for the gas export laws to be eased to take advantage of a window in the Asia- Pacific market before supplies begin from the US, Australia and Africa. Since Putin granted Gazprom the exclusive legal right to ship gas abroad in 2006 to avoid undermining export prices, the monopoly hasn’t started building any LNG capacity.

"To remain competitive on global gas markets, Russia needs to add an LNG component to its export strategy," Ildar Davletshin, an analyst at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, said today by phone. "If you look at the project pipeline in Australia and East Africa, Russia risks losing out."

The draft law will grant access to LNG exports to those companies developing fields with licenses that stipulate the gas is intended for LNG as well as state companies producing from offshore blocks, and could take effect as soon as Dec. 1, according to a copy on the website of parliament’s lower house, the State Duma.

After the president signs the law, Novatek will have control over exports from the USD20 billion Yamal LNG project that it’s developing with Total SA and China National Petroleum Corp.

The gas producer, controlled by billionaires Gennady Timchenko and Leonid Mikhelson, plans to send its first commercial shipments in the first half of 2017, Yamal LNG Marketing & Shipping Director Gabriel Brecque said in Paris on Nov. 20.

State-controlled Rosneft and ExxonMobil are planning to start an LNG plant with capacity of 5 million metric tons on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific by the end of the decade.

Russia aims to produce at least 40 million tpy, or more than 11% of the world’s LNG, by 2020 -- up from about 5% now, Deputy Energy Minister Kirill Molodtsov said at a September conference on Sakhalin, where Gazprom bought into the country’s only plant for the fuel in 2006. The plant began output in 2009.

MRC

M&G Chemicals plans to invest in biorefinery in China

MOSCOW (MRC) -- M&G Chemicals, a leading producer of PET for packaging applications in the Americas and the market's technological leader, plans to invest in a biorefinery in China that will make PET building block ethylene glycol from straw, as per Plastemart.

M&G of Tortona, Italy, part of the Mossi Ghisolfi Group, will build the biorefinery in Fuyang, in Anhui province with Chinese company Guozhen as partner. The biorefinery will process 2.2 bln lbs of straw annually.

In addition to ethylene glycol it will make ethanol and byproduct lignin will fuel an electric cogeneration plant. The plant will use enzyme technology supplied by Beta Renewables a company partly owned by Mossi Ghisolfi Group.

M&G estimates the biorefinery will cost about USD500 mln and be on stream in mid-2015. Beta Renewables recently started up a biorefinery in Crescentino, Italy.

"This is the first act of a green revolution that M&G Chemicals is bringing to the polyester chain to provide environmental sustainability," noted M&G Chemicals CEO Marco Ghisolfi in a news release. He cited growing demand for sustainable materials as evidenced by Coca-Cola Co.’s aim to use partially plant-based PET in all its bottles by 2020.

M&G plans to raise about USD500 mln in an initial public offering on the Hong Kong exchange by the end of the year.

We remind that, as MRC reported earlier, last September, M&G Group, announced that it had purchased the land in Corpus Christi, Texas where it will build its one million tonnes per year PET plant (2.2 billion pounds) and accompanying 1.2 million tonnes per year (2.6 billion pounds) PTA plant.

M&G Group is a family owned chemical engineering and manufacturing group headquartered in Tortona, Italy. M&G Group operates in the PET resin industry through its wholly-owned holding company Mossi & Ghisolfi International S.A. (M&G International). M&G International is one of the largest producer of PET resin for packaging applications in the Americas, with a production capacity in 2012 of approximately 1.6 million tons per annum.
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