Shanghai Petrochemical shut MEG plant for maintenance in China

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shanghai Petrochemical shut down its No.1 monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant for maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the plant was shut on April 23, 2014. It is slated to remain off-stream for around two weeks.

Located in Shanghai, China, the plant has a production capacity of 225,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed earlier, Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical shut down its high density polyethylene (HDPE) plant in China on March 26, 2014 owing to feedstock issues. A restart date for the plant could not be ascertained. Located in Shanghai, China, the plant has a production capacity of 250,000 mt/year.

We remind that Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical restarted its acrylonitrile (ACN) plant on December 25, 2013. It was shut on November 20, 2013 for maintenance turnaround. Located in Shanghai, China , the plant has a production capacity of 130,000 mt/year.

Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest scale integrated energy and chemical companies with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. Its refining and ethylene capacity ranks No.2 and No.4 globally. The Company has 30,000 sales and distribution networks of oil products and chemical products, its service stations are now ranked third largest in the world.
MRC

MSOCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell International Inc. first-quarter earnings rose 5.3% as sales rose across most of the industrial conglomerate's business segments, said The Wall Street Journal.

Citing first-quarter performance, as well as the overall favorable outlook for Honeywell's key end markets, the company boosted the lower end of its per-share earnings outlook for the year by five cents, and now expects a profit of USD5.40 to USD5.55 a share.

Still, Honeywell remains "cautiously optimistic on the macro environment, even with some nice momentum exiting the quarter" in the company's short- and long-cycle businesses driving organic sales growth acceleration as the year progresses, said Chief Executive Dave Cote.

While the global economic recovery has struggled to gain momentum, Honeywell and other major U.S. manufacturers have noticed some pockets of strength, with stronger results in Europe, higher orders in China and improvement in the sluggish U.S. economy.

As the soft economy slows revenue growth, Honeywell—a maker of aerospace, building control and safety products—has focused on boosting its margins to grow its profits. Honeywell has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to streamline the company, focusing largely on Europe.

Last month, the company said it is seeking to spend USD10 billion on strategic acquisitions that would contribute about USD5 billion to USD8 billion in sales over the next five years. The company also at that time said it expects to meet the targets in its previous five-year plan, which ends this year.

For the quarter ended March 31, Honeywell reported earnings of USD1.02 billion, or USD1.28 a share, up from USD966 million, or USD1.21 a share, a year earlier. Adjusted for an expected full-year tax rate at 26.5%, per-share earnings rose to USD1.28 from USD1.16. Total sales rose 3.8% to USD9.68 billion.

Sales at the automation and control-systems business, which serves the commercial-construction industry, rose 7.6% to USD4.07 billion. The aerospace unit's sales slipped 1.8% to USD2.86 billion.

Performance materials and technologies sales rose 2.2% to USD1.75 billion, while transportation systems sales rose 8.6% to USD993 million.

As MRC wrote earlier, OOO Kirishinefteorgsintez selected Honeywell to supply its experion process knowledge system (PKS) and advanced alarm manager system at the company"s refinery in Kirishi, in the Leningrad region of Russia.

Besides, as MRC informed earlier, last summer Honeywell's UOP has been selected by Russias Lukoil to provide technology to produce high-quality gasoline blending components, propylene and other petrochemicals at its facility in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. The suite of Honeywell's UOP technology will be used in a new integrated fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) complex, the second such complex to be licensed by Lukoil at the Nizhny Novgorod facility.The new units, expected to start up in 2015, will produce more than 1 million tpy of gasoline blending components and more than 170,000 tpy of propylene.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - Austrian oil and gas company OMV's first-quarter production rose 12% thanks to Norwegian assets bought from Statoil and a partial return of Libyan production, said Reuters.

Output rose to 311,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) from 277,000 in the fourth quarter, also helped by a resumption of production after a shutdown in New Zealand and the completion of development projects in Pakistan, OMV said.

OMV's refining margin rose to USD1.63 per barrel, an improvement over the fourth quarter's USD1.16 but still well below the USD3.01 of a year earlier as economic weakness continued to hurt European oil demand.

"The improvement, however, was more than offset by lower sales volumes, a lower domestic market price level in Germany and the longer than planned turnaround in Bayernoil," OMV said on Wednesday, referring to the German refinery it is selling.

OMV said production in Libya, which accounted for about 10 percent of the company's output before the 2011 uprising that toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi, was hit by security issues again in the quarter and had been shut in since mid-March.

It added that its gas margin in Turkey was negative in the quarter due to higher supply costs resulting from the unfavourable dollar-lira rate.

As MRC wrote before, Clariant, a world leader in specialty chemicals, has announced that it has signed a long-term supply contract with OMV for ethylene supply.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company, commonly known as Socar, is in the final stages of negotiations for a USD3.9 billion loan package to help build a refinery in Turkey, which aims to develop the biggest petrochemical complex in the country - Petkim (part of Socar), reported Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to two people familiar with the talks.

State Oil Company of Azerbaijan expects to sign the agreement by early June, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are confidential.

Socar is building the USD5.5 billion Star refinery on the Aegean coast as it seeks to expand its naphtha output. The refinery, Turkey’s fifth, will process 10 million tpy of crude from 2017, producing 1.3 million tons of naphtha, as well as diesel and jet fuel.

About 95% of the borrowing will come from international lenders arranged by the Turkish unit of Unicredit SpA, Italy’s biggest lender, and will have a maturity of 18 years, the people said. The funds will be come with guaranteed coverage from eight export-credit agencies, including the US Ex-Im Bank and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The remainder may come from commercial loans, the people said.

Kenan Yavuz, chief executive of Socar’s Turkish unit, is in London today to discuss the loan package with creditors, one of the people said.

The Azeri oil producer and processor, which pledged USD17 billion for projects in Turkey by 2018, including a pipeline to carry gas to Europe via Turkish soil, is increasing spending amid rising demand for fuel and chemicals.

Naphtha from the Star refinery will be used to make petrochemicals at Socar’s Turkish Petkim Petrokimya Holding division. Petkim will take 2 million tpy of fuel from the plant, to be built by Tecnicas Reunidas, Itochu, Saipem and GS Engineering & Construction.

The US Ex-Im Bank approved a USD641 million loan to finance the export of equipment to Turkey for the project, its chairman Fred Hochberg said in December.

SOCAR includes production association Azneft (companies producing oil and gas on land and sea) and Production Association Azerkimya (chemical industry), production association Azerigas (gas distribution).
The State Oil Company is the only producer of oil products in the country (it has two refineries on its balance sheet) and also owns petrol stations in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Romania. SOCAR possesses a network of petrol stations in Switzerland and is the co-owner of the largest Turkish petrochemical complex Petkim.

Petkim is the leading petrochemical company of Turkey. Specializing in petrochemical manufacturing, the company produces ethylene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene and other chemical building blocks for use in the manufacture of plastics, textiles, and other consumer and industrial products.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF, the world's petrochemical major, is building a new world-scale plant for the production of specialty amines in Ludwigshafen (Germany), reported the company on its site.

Start-up of the facility with a total annual capacity of about 12,000 metric tons is scheduled for 2015. The product range of this flexible multi-product plant comprises 15 amines for different applications. The major applications are in the construction, automotive, crop protection and pharmaceutical industries. With this new facility, BASF is expanding its global production network of amines with plants in Ludwigshafen and Schwarzheide in Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Geismar, Louisiana; and Nanjing, China.

"With the new plant we are responding to our customers’ demand for specialty amines, particularly in Europe," said Sanjeev Gandhi, President, BASF Intermediates division. "We have decades of experience in developing and manufacturing amines, and with the new plant we are reinforcing our global leadership position in these versatile intermediates."

As MRC wrote before, BASF had announced in March that it is building another new multi-product plant for the production of specialty amines at the BASF Verbund site in Nanjing, China. The main products of this plant, which is due to start-up operations in 2015, will be dimethylaminopropylamine (DMAPA) and polyetheramine (PEA).

With about 200 different amines, BASF has the world’s most diverse portfolio of this type of chemical intermediates. Along with alkyl-, alkanol-, alkoxyalkylamines, the company offers heterocyclic and aromatic as well as specialty amines. The range is completed by an expanding portfolio of chiral amines of high optical and chemical purity. The versatile products are used mainly to manufacture process chemicals, pharmaceuticals and crop protection products, as well as cosmetic products and detergents. They also serve to produce coatings, special plastics, composites and special fibers.

The BASF Group’s Intermediates division develops, produces and markets a comprehensive portfolio of more than 700 intermediates around the world. Its most important product groups include amines, diols, polyalcohols, acids and specialties. Among other applications, intermediates are used as starting materials for coatings, plastics, pharmaceuticals, textiles, detergents and crop protectants. Around the globe the division generated sales to third parties of about EUR2.8 billion in 2013.
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