PVC prices continue to rise in Russian market

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Negotiations over September contract prices of Russian polyvinyl chloride (PVC) began this week. As expected, producers announced a further increase in prices, as per ICIS-MRC Price report.

Negotiations over September contract prices of Russia PVC started on Monday, 24 September. Supply of resin for September shipments increased from local producers, PVC with K=70 being the exception. In most cases, converters were forced to report a further upward trend of contract prices.

Russian producers faced a major rise in PVC prices in August, prices of material grew to Rb71,000-76,000/tonne CPT Moscow, including VAT, for K=64/67, whereas July prices were by Rb7,000-8,500/tonne lower. Converters had to raise their prices for finished products by 8-15%, depending on the product, because of such a significant increase in PVC prices.

The August price surge was caused by a shortage of resin in the market. Two major producers - SayanskKhimplast and Bashkhir Soda Company - shut down their production for maintenance simultaneously: SayanskKhimplast - for a one-month turnaround from 9 August, Bashkhir Soda Company - for two weeks from 13 August. And import shipments could not be increased quickly because of long delivery.

Supply of PVC from Russian producers will grow significantly in September. Thus, Bashkhir Soda Company will resume its production from 27 August, whereas SayanskKhimplast plans to start making first shipments from 10 September after the outage. However, a price rise cannot be avoided in September, despite the increased supply of resin in the market.

Deals for September shipments of Russian PVC were negotiated in the range of Rb74,000-76,000/tonne CPT Moscow, including VAT, this week. An acute shortage of resin with K=70 remained, offer prices from some producers reached Rb79,500/tonne CPT Moscow, including VAT.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Yangzi Petrochemical is in plans to restart a linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant following a maintenance turnaround, reported Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the plant was shut in end-July 2015. It is likely to remain off-stream till the end of current month. The plant is expected to resume operations early next week.

Located at Nanjing in China, the plant has a production capacity of 200,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed before, PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, restarted a high density polyethylene/linear low density polyethylene (HDPE/LLDPE) plant following maintenance turnaround in early June 2015. It was shut on April 10, 2015. Located in Dushanzi, China, the plant has a production capacity of 660,000 mt/year.

Besides, Sinopec Zhenhai shut down its HDPE/LLDPE swing plant for maintenance turnaround in April 2015. It remained off-stream for around two months. Located at Ningbo in China, the plant has a production capacity of 450,000 mt/year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- SIBUR, the largest petrochemical holding in Russia and Eastern Europe and Russia’s largest supplier of material for PET containers, has opposed restrictions on bottling beer in plastic bottles, as per RBK.

"By declaring the course for imports substitution, the state does not always support it with the concrete initiatives" - wrote SIBUR’s CEO Dmitriy Konov in the article "The industrial policy: Imports substitution without speculation".

Thus, he gave an example of a possible limitation of circulation of PET packaging (plastic bottles) for bear bottling, "the industry for the production of which has grown in Russia from a scratch to almost a complete coverage of the domestic market for the last 10 years".

"It's a niche for at least three petrochemical segments - PET (bottles), polypropylene (caps), BOPP films (labels)," - said D.Konov.

SIBUR is a vertically integrated gas processing and petrochemicals company. SIBUR owns and operates Russia’s largest gas processing business in terms of associated petroleum gas processing volumes and is a leader in the Russian petrochemicals industry. SIBUR operates 26 production sites in various regions of Russia. The Group employs 26,000 people. The Company sells its products to over 1,400 major customers engaged in the energy, automotive, construction, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), chemical and other industries in approximately 70 countries worldwide.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie won a judge’s approval of a USD225 million settlement with ExxonMobil to end litigation over decades-old pollution, an accord Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups call inadequate, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The deal is a "reasonable compromise," a state judge ruled Tuesday, even though New Jersey sought damages of USD8.9 billion to resolve a 2004 case over the company’s refinery and petrochemical plants in Bayonne and Linden. The accord will pay for Exxon’s damage to natural resources.

Exxon and the Department of Environmental Protection settled the case in February after an eight-month trial, sparking an outcry from activists who said the state sold out to corporate interests for 3 cents on the dollar.

Acting New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman said the deal would ensure Exxon would continue remediation work at polluted sites.

Michael Hogan, a retired Superior Court judge who heard the case, said the deal was fair, in the public interest and faithful to the state’s Spill Compensation and Control Act. New Jersey will retain the right to pursue litigation against Exxon, according to Hogan.

"The DEP applied rational methods in order to estimate total damages and determine what a fair payment would be for those damages," Hogan ruled. "Although far smaller than the estimated $8.9 billion in damages, Exxon’s payment represents a reasonable compromise given the substantial litigation risks the DEP faced at trial and would face on appeal."

Exxon agreed in 1991 to clean up almost 1,600 acres on the site near New York Harbor, and has paid almost USD258 million since then to do so, Hogan wrote in his 81-page opinion.

As MRC informed previously, in early 2014, ExxonMobil officially opened its multi-billion dollar Singapore chemical plant expansion on Jurong Island, to serve growth markets in the Asia-Pacific region. The expansion included a second 1-million-t/y steam cracker, two 650,000-t/y polyethylene plants, a 450,000-t/y polypropylene plant, a 300,000-t/y specialty elastomers unit, an aromatics extraction facility to produce 340,000 t/y of benzene, and a 125,000-t/y oxo-alcohol expansion.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC