Ukraine agrees with Slovakia on piping natural gas from Europe

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ukraine agreed with neighbor Slovakia on conditions for supplying natural gas from the European Union through Slovak pipelines to reduce dependence on Russia, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The two sides agreed on conditions for flows of gas from west to east and will sign a memorandum as soon as Ukraine is ready, Vahram Chuguryan, a spokesman for Slovak pipeline company Eustream, said by phone. Ukraine may sign the deal this week, Kyiv Post online said, citing Energy Minister Eduard Stavytskyi.

Importing gas from the EU through Slovakia would provide an alternative to Russian supplies at a time when Ukraine has been rocked by protests led by pro-EU opposition to President Viktor Yanukovych. The president backed off European integration deals under pressure from Russia. In the biggest protests since the 2004 Orange Revolution, hundreds of thousands gathered yesterday in Kiev, where a statue of Vladimir Lenin was toppled.

"We have reached an agreement in principle," Chuguryan said. "Now it’s up to the Ukrainian side to set the date."

Talks with the European Commission are complete, he said. The boards of Eustream and Ukrtransgaz, transport unit of Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz, must sign the accord.

As MRC wrote before, Wang Jing, the Chinese billionaire behind a USD40 billion plan to cut a canal through Nicaragua, wants to invest USD10 billion in a deepwater port in Ukraine. The project’s first phase, estimated at USD3 billion, includes building a new deepwater port, reconstructing Sevastopol port and developing an economic zone that will house technology-focused companies, the company said in a statement.MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Evonik Industries and LanzaTech have signed a three year research cooperation agreement which will see Evonik combining its existing biotechnology platforms with LanzaTech’s synthetic biology and gas fermentation expertise for the development of a route to bioprocessedn precursors for specialty plastics from waste derived synthesis gas, said Evonik.

In this route, microorganisms placed in fermenters are used to turn synthesis gas into chemical products. Synthesis gases comprise mainly of either carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide and hydrogen and can come from a variety of gasified biomass waste streams including forestry and agricultural residues and gasified municipal solid waste.

"Industrial biotechnology is one of the core competences of Evonik. It enables new approaches to specialty chemicals and processes," explains Prof. Stefan Buchholz, the head of Creavis. Creavis, Evonik’s strategic innovation arm, is committed to developing alternative bio-based pathways for the production of such specialty chemicals, to not only reduce dependence on fossil fuels, but also reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with their manufacture. "The use of renewables and specific waste streams is one of the main focuses of our research and development work, and LanzaTech offers an additional interesting approach," says Buchholz.

"We are really happy to be working with Evonik," said LanzaTech CEO Jennifer Holmgren, "which has a tremendous biotech capability – so makes us feel good that they feel we are the experts in this sector plus they are not just trying to do all this work by themselves. We are also happy to be extending our chemicals tool box into precursors to plastics.

As MRC said before, Evonik Industries, the German specialty chemicals company, is significantly expanding its global isophorone (IP) and isophorone diamine (IPD) capacities by funding an investment of more than EUR100 million in Shanghai, China. The new production plants will be completed in the first quarter of 2014 and will increase the total capacities of IP and IPD significantly.

Evonik, the industrial group from Germany, is one of the world leaders in specialty chemicals. Profitable growth and a sustained increase in the value of the company form the heart of Evonik’s corporate strategy. Its activities focus on the key megatrends health, nutrition, resource efficiency and globalization. Evonik is active in over 100 countries around the world. The group is a global market leader in isophorone chemistry with production facilities in Herne, Marl (Germany), Mobile, Alabama (USA) and Antwerp (Belgium). Its products are known worldwide under the brand names of VESTAMIN, VESTANAT, VESTAGON and VESTASOL.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- The 488-meter-long hull of Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) plant has been floated out of the dry dock at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) yard in Geoje, South Korea, where it is currently under construction, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to the company's statement.

Once complete, Prelude FLNG will be the largest floating facility ever built. It will unlock new energy resources offshore and produce approximately 3.6 million tpy of LNG to meet growing demand, according to the company.

FLNG will allow Shell to produce natural gas at sea, turn it into liquefied natural gas and then transfer it directly to the ships that will transport it to customers. It will enable the development of gas resources ranging from clusters of smaller more remote fields to potentially larger fields via multiple facilities where, for a range of reasons, an onshore development is not viable.

This can mean faster, cheaper, more flexible development and deployment strategies for resources that were previously uneconomic, or constrained by technical or other risks, according to the company.

Prelude FLNG is the first deployment of Shell’s FLNG technology and will operate in a remote basin around 475 kilometers north-east of Broome, Western Australia, for around 25 years. The facility will remain onsite during all weather events, the company says, having been designed to withstand a category 5 cyclone.

As MRC informed previously, Shell, one of the largest gas producers in the US, will build plants in Louisiana and Canada to produce liquefied natural gas as a fuel for heavy trucks and large ships. The company will build the facilities in Geismar, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River south of Baton Rouge, and in Sarnia, Ontario, on the southern shore of Lake Huron just east of Michigan. Each plant will be able to produce 250,000 tpy of LNG. The facilities are expected to take about three years to complete. The facilities will be relatively small compared with other natural gas liquefaction terminals around the world, such as those in Qatar, but they will represent a doubling of the liquefied-gas manufacturing capacity in the US and Canada.

Royal Dutch Shell, commonly known as Shell, is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors".
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- PTT Global Chemical has awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to SK Engineering and Construction and PTT Maintenance and Engineering for a debottlenecking project that will increase aromatics capacity by 16% to about 1.2-million t/y at its Aromatics II complex in Rayong, Thailand, said Apic-online.

The approximately USD128.8-million project will increase paraxylene capacity to 770,000 t/y from 655,000 t/y, benzene capacity to 390,000 t/y from 355,000 t/y and will add 20,000 t/y of orthoxylene capacity.

Completion of the expansion is scheduled for the end of 2015.

As MRC wrote previously, in June 2013, Indonesian state-owned energy company Pertamina signed an agreement to purchase petrochemical products from Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical. The agreement serves as a pre-marketing strategy for Pertamina and PTT’s joint Indonesian petrochemical business. Under the agreement, PTT will deliver at least 5,000 tonnes of polyethylene and polypropylene products each month to Pertamina for sale in Indonesia.

PTT Global Chemical is a leading player in the petrochemical industry and owns several petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 8.45 million tonnes a year. PTTGC is 49% owned by state-controlled parent PTT Pcl, and uses ethane and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from the gas plant as feedstock for its I4-2 olefins plant.

MRC