Sinopec 2014 refinery runs up 1.5%, ethylene output rose 7.2%

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Corp, Asia's largest refiner, said it processed 1.48% more crude oil in 2014 than a year earlier, but diesel production fell over 4% as a slowing economy hit demand for the fuel used for transport and construction, as per Reuters.

While it recorded a healthy 7.2% growth in ethylene output, the company said synthetic fibre - largely used to make textiles - fell 5.5%, an evidence of a weak textile market.

Sinopec, also China's second-largest oil and gas producer, recorded an 8.5% growth in total oil and gas productions last year, with overseas operations contributing most of the crude oil growth, the company said in a filing to the stock exchange on Tuesday.

The operational data was unaudited.

Refinery throughput at 235.38 million tonnes was equivalent to 4.74 million barrels per day, or 47% of the country's total.

As MRC wrote before, in August 2013, Sinopec Wuhan Company’s ethylene project with a capacity of 800,000 tonnes per year produced first batch of qualified products, marking its successful commissioning and startup. The project is a pivotal project of Sinopec in the 11th five-year-plan period and the most important project in Hubei province. The project, including 11 greenfield major production units with public utilities and supporting facilities, was built in three years with an total investment of 16.563 billion yuan.

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.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- TPSC Asia is likely to shut a polystyrene (PS) plant for maintenance turnaround, said Apic-online.

A source in Singapore informed that the plant is likely to be shut in April 2015. It is likely to remain off-stream for around one month.

Located in Singapore, the plant has a production capacity of 100,000 mt/year.

The other PS producer in Singapore is Denka Chemical.

As MRC wrote before, DuPont has agreed to sell its DuPont Neoprene polychloroprene businesses to Denka Performance Elastomer. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2015. Denka Performance Elastomer is a new joint venture between Japan-based firms Denka (70%) and Mitsui & Co (30%).

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MOSCOW (MRC) -- UAE-based Borouge, a manufacturer of polyoleofins, has introduced three new solutions for advanced packaging, baby care and toy market at Arabplast 2015, according to Trade Arabia.

"Our focus on innovative and sustainable solutions will drive our growth and that of our customers," Youssef Taha, vice president of Borouge’s Moulding Marketing Centre, was quoted as saying in a report released by WAM, the Emirates’ News Agency.

"We strive to create solutions with higher efficiency in every way, in material selection, energy consumption and carbon emission."

BD265MO is a high impact block copolymer developed specifically for heavy-duty applications. Apart from offering high impact resistance and noo break properties at room temperature, it is also FDA-approved for food and child contact applications, the report said.

RJ766MO is the latest addition to the Borouge high-flow random polypropylene family, purposed-designed to combine transparency and very high flow with excellent organoleptic performance, making it ideal for transparent packaging and house ware applications, WAM said.

BB2588 is a multimodal HDPE material that offers converters more versatile processability over its predecessor BB2581, allowing them to reap the full benefits of multimodal resin performance without cumbersome machine adjustments and modifications. Based on the unique Borstar multimodal technology, BB2588 delivers up to 10% higher stiffness and up to 10 times better ESCR compared to unimodal HDPE resins, according to the report.

As MRC reported earlier, in March 2014, Borealis and Borouge announced the development of new products such as Borealis PP4874 for data cables and Borealis LE0563 for submarine power cable jackets.

Borouge is a joint venture between the Abu Dhabi National Oil company and Borealis.

Borealis is a leading provider of innovative solutions in the fields of polyolefins, base chemicals and fertilizers. Borealis is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and operates in over 120 countries with around 5,300 employees worldwide, generating EUR7.5 billion in sales revenue in 2012.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF will increase its production capacity for the chemical intermediate 1,4-butanediol (BDO) by 10% at its site in Geismar, Louisiana, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to the company's announcement.

The expansion is expected to be complete in 2016.

The company will then have a global capacity of BDO of 670,000 tpy. Additionally, BASF says it is looking into further measures to strengthen and to expand its BDO value chain at the Geismar site.

Besides its Geismar site, BASF is also producing BDO at its sites in Ludwigshafen, Germany, Kuantan, Malaysia, Caojing, China and Chiba, Japan.

In addition, a new BDO site of a joint venture of BASF and the Chinese company Xinjiang Markor is expected to commence operations of 100,000 tpy by 2015.

"Being the leading producer of BDO globally, we continue to expand our production capacity step wise to support the growth of our customers as a reliable partner", said Stefan Blank, president of BASF's intermediates division.

BDO is used for producing plastics, solvents, electronic chemicals and elastic fibers. Depending on the production technology, the starting materials for the production of conventional BDO are natural gas, coal, butane, butadiene and propylene.

As MRC wrote before, in October 2014, BASF and Archroma agreed on the sale of BASF’s global textile chemicals business to Archroma, a supplier of specialty chemicals to the textile, paper and emulsions industries.

BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF had sales of about EUR74 billion in 2013 and over 112,000 employees as of the end of the year.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Specialty chemicals company Lanxess Corporation has added two new highly concentrated antioxidants to its existing range of biodiesel stabilizers, reported company in its press release.

The new products - Baynox Ultra and Baynox Cargo - were introduced to the US market at the National Biodiesel Conference & Expo January 19-22 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Baynox Ultra, a highly active liquid oxidation stabilizer, is an easy-to-use additive that effectively prolongs the shelf life of biodiesel, especially for soybean and sunflower methyl esters. It contains a balanced blend of highly active antioxidants and a chelating agent dissolved in a "green" solvent. With an active content of more than 40%, Baynox Ultra is typically added in a concentration of 200 to 500 ppm to the biodiesel. Since the stabilizer does not crystallize, it can be used reliably at temperatures as low as 20 degrees Fahrenheit (F).

Baynox Cargo is a ready-to-use solution of the established Baynox antioxidant in an organic solvent, which has been developed as an oxidation stabilizer for the treatment of biodiesel cargos. It has an active content of more than 35%. The solution has a low viscosity and a flash point above 140 F for easy handling. It remains liquid even at 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tony Mazzarella, NAFTA Business Manager, explains: "The highly concentrated antioxidants Baynox Ultra and Baynox Cargo ensure that the biofuel obtained from natural raw material remains stable and can be used for longer. Otherwise, the fuel's unsaturated fatty acid structures can easily oxidize in contact with atmospheric oxygen. Heat, light and pressure make the oil rancid within a short time."

The consequences of such oxidation are a degradation of the biodiesel into short-chained fatty acids and the formation of insoluble polymers (gums), which can cause damage to the engine and the injection system. Lanxess' Baynox range is continually being adapted to the rapid developments in the automotive industry and includes increasingly high-performance products. The pressures in diesel engines are continually rising, as are the injector temperatures. On the other hand, tolerances for manufacturers of biodiesel are getting smaller and smaller and the specifications ever narrower. "With Baynox Ultra, our customers will be ideally equipped to meet the demands of modern fuels made by the automotive industry," says Mazzarella.

As MRC wrote previously, in July 2013, Lanxess celebrated the opening of its first production facility in Russia. In the new plant at the Lipetsk site, Lanxess subsidiary Rhein Chemie manufactures polymer-bound rubber additives for the markets in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), primarily for the automotive and tire industries. A production facility for the bladders used in tire production is to be added in 2016. The overall investment volume in euros amounts to a seven-digit figure and 40 new jobs will be created at the new plant in the medium term.

Lanxess is a leading specialty chemicals company with sales of EUR 8.3 billion in 2013 and roughly 17,000 employees in 31 countries. The company is currently represented at 52 production sites worldwide. The core business of Lanxess is the development, manufacturing and marketing of plastics, rubber, intermediates and specialty chemicals.
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