PetroChina Sichuan refinery and petrochemical complex ready for trial run after repeated delays

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroChina's USD6 bln refinery and petrochemical complex in Southwest China will be ready for trial production in weeks, more than a year later than originally touted due to repeated delays, as per officials in Reuters.

The start-up of the 200,000 barrels-per-day Sichuan facility is being closely watched as it is the first major refinery in China's landlocked southwest and will process crude from the remote Xinjiang region, as well as from Russia and Kazakhstan.

It will also be one of the two major new refineries the world's second's largest oil consumer is expected to bring online in 2014. The other is the 240,000-bpd Quanzhou refinery, with investment by state-run Sinochem Corp.

Quanzhou, in the southeastern province of Fujian, is expected to start in the first quarter of 2014, delayed from an original timeline of mid-2013.

Sichuan refinery was last expected to start trial production in late October, according to company officials. That was after several delays including one as local residents expressed concerns over safety following an earthquake in Sichuan in April.

The Sichuan plant has an affiliated petrochemical complex including an 800,000 tonne-per-year ethylene unit, which produces feedstock for making plastics and textiles. Officials did not specify if the petrochemical plant would start operating at the same time.

Tighter government scrutiny and growing public awareness of environmental and safety standards have over the past few years contributed to a slowing in China's refinery expansions, following more rapid development since the mid-1990s.

Plans for a USD13 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in east China - a joint investment by PetroChina, Royal Dutch Shell and Qatar Petroleum, have stalled over finding a suitable site.

As MRC reported before, this summer, Johnson Matthey Davy Technologies and The Dow Chemical announced that PetroChina Guangdong Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of PetroChina selected LP Oxo technology to produce 2-ethylhexanol, normal butanol and iso butyraldehyde in its major petrochemical complex in Jieyang, Guangdong, China. The new LP Oxo unit, with a capacity of 85,000 metric tons of 2-ethylhexanol, 235,000 metric tons of normal butanol and 33,000 metric tons of iso-butyraldehyde on a yearly basis, will adopt JM Davy and Dow's LP Oxo SELECTOR 10 Technology with advanced liquid phase hydrogenation which features a high conversion of propylene to alcohols, low capital investment and easy operation.

PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia’s Gazprom Neft has said it expects to end the year with production up 4.3% to around 435 million barrels of oil. The Moscow-headquartered state oil player said it expected to raise capital expenditure by 32% to 278 billion rubles (USD8.44 billion) next year, said Upstreamonline.

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said that "modernisation of refineries, which will provide them with a leading position in the industry, as well as developing new regions, including the Arctic shelf, will be the key areas of the company’s further development".

The explorer’s capital outlay for this year came in less than expected at 210 billion rubles in an underspend put down by the company to the delay in auctions for the fields of the undistributed subsoil fund.

A third of next year’s capital spend will go to upstream projects in traditional areas of operation, with a focus on maintaining output at mature fields, unlocking hard-to-reach reserves and developing projects in the Orenburg region, Gazprom Neft said.

Major new production projects due for commissioning in the next three years include the Novoportovskoye and Messoyakha in the northern part of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, and international projects.

Exploration will concentrate on Eastern Siberia and Iraqi Kurdistan.

The company also predicted that oil production at its Prirazlomnoye field – the site of the so-called Arctic 30’s high-profile protest in September – would begin before the end of the month.

As MRC wrote before, Gazprom Neft has signed an agreement with France-based Total to form a joint venture to produce and sell modified bitumen and bitumen emulsions on the Russian market. Each partner will have a 50% stake in the joint venture, which will build a special production facility at Gazprom Neft's Moscow oil refinery.

Gazprom Neft, is the fourth largest oil producer in Russia and ranked third according to refining throughput. It is a subsidiary of Gazprom, which owns about 96% of its shares. The company is registered and headquartered in St. Petersburg after central offices were relocated from Moscow in 2011.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hong Kong Petrochemical is likely to shut its polystyrene (PS) plant for maintenance turnaround, reported Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Hong Kong informed that the plant is likely to be shut in early February 2014. It is likely to remain off-stream for around one month.

Located in Yuen Long industrial estate, Hong Kong, the plant has a production capacity of 140,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed earlier, Concern Stirol (Gorlovka), the only polystyrene producer in Ukraine, suspended its PS production in late October, having stopped its capacities for a month long maintenance works. The plant was shut down because of the shortage of styrene monomer (SM), the main feedstock. However, the plant has not resumed production of styrene polymers after an outage in October yet. Thus, PS was not produced in November in Ukraine.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- NOVA Chemicals plans to expand ethylene production capacity by 20% at its cracker in Corunna, Ontario, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The Corunna cracker has a current capacity of about 839,000 tpy, according to media reports.

The expansion will occur between 2014 and 2018, according to the company. It will be part of a wave of expansions and upgrades to NOVA's existing facilities near Sarnia, Ontario.

Other upgrades in the plan include a debottlenecking of the Moore low-density polyethylene (LDPE) line and a retrofit of the Moore high-density polyethylene (HDPE) line.

"These projects are intended to build on the impact of the Corunna cracker conversion to utilize up to 100% natural gas liquids (NGLs) to enhance NOVA Chemicals’ capabilities to meet growing and more sophisticated customer demands," the company said in a statement.

The estimated cost of the projects, under the company's NOVA 2020 growth strategy, is USD300 million.

As MRC reported earlier, growth in the LDPE market is part of NOVA 2020, the company's long-term asset strategy to capitalize on emerging feedstock opportunities and growing North American demand. Restoring the Moore facility is the first step in NOVA Chemicals’ plan to strengthen its commitment to the LDPE market to better meet the needs of customers.

NOVA Chemicals Corporation is a plastics and chemical company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the International Petroleum Investment Company (IPIC) of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The global ethylene market is expected to exhibit a 6.2% CAGR through 2017 and grow from USD 131.88 billion in 2012 to over USD 177.82 billion in 2017, reported Digital Journal.

In 2012, the North American ethylene market was worth more than USD 37.77 billion. The regional market is forecast to surpass the USD 46.6 billion mark in 2017, registering a 4.3% CAGR in the upcoming years.

The considerable growth in the North American ethylene market is likely to be spurred by the entrance of new companies attracted by the low-cost and abundant natural gas liquids (NGLs) feedstock. The US capacity additions are predicted to experience a 6.1% CAGR in the offing, likely to increase from 27.17 million metric tons per year (MMTY) in 2012 to almost 36.5 MMTY by 2017-end.

The Dow Chemical Company, LyondellBasell Industries N.V. and Exxon Mobil Corporation are among the leading companies engaged in the ethylene industry in North America.

As MRC wrote before, in late 2012, GlobalData predicted that the ongoing shale revolution wouldl guide the US ethylene industry surge in the near future, growing by more than a third by 2017.

Five years ago, the US was one of the most expensive places to produce ethylene, but the ethane-based US petrochemicals industry is now in a better position than the naphtha-based petrochemicals industries of Europe and Asia-Pacific, and second only to the Middle East in terms of production economy.
MRC