KBR awarded construction contract for Chemours new Corpus Christi facility

MOSCOW (MRC) -- KBR, Inc. has been awarded a construction contract by The Chemours Company, a global chemistry company with leading market positions in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts and chemical solutions, for the construction of its new facility in Corpus Christi, Texas, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide complete construction services for this critically important investment in new generation environmentally friendly refrigerants at the Chemours plant site in Corpus Christi, Texas.

This work is expected to be completed over 18 months, with KBR executing all construction scope, providing construction management and direct hire craft labor. This new scope is in concert with the already completed early conceptual engineering and estimating for the project and the detailed design and procurement services currently being provided by KBR's Wilmington and Monterrey offices under a long-standing Master Services Agreement.

The addition to the Corpus Christi facility is an investment in large-scale manufacturing to expand the supply of Chemours' portfolio of refrigerants. The new plant will use a patented process to manufacture hydrofluoroolefins(HFOs) used in automotive air conditioning and in refrigerant blends for a range of applications. The investment will create the world's largest facility for manufacturing HFOs, and the location will allow Chemours to efficiently serve the growing market in North America and Europe, as well as the rest of the world.

As MRC informed previously, in May 2016, Chemours announced that it had begun the commercial startup of its new titanium dioxide (TiO2) line at its Altamira plant in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

The Chemours Company, commonly referred to as Chemours, is an American chemical company that was founded in July 2015 as a spin-off from DuPont. It has its corporate headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, United States.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Total Petrochemicals and Refining restarted two more lines at its polystyrene (PS) facility at Carville, Louisiana, late last week, as per Plastemart.

One facility was restarted over the previous weekend and the second one early last week after a shutdown in June. First two lines at the site were restarted in late July and early August.

Total declared a force majeure in late June on general purpose polystyrene, high impact polystyrene and high heat crystal out of Carville, according to a letter sent to customers and obtained by S&P Global Platts at that time.

"This action becomes necessary due to the local electricity provider transformer failure and subsequent unplanned shutdown of our reactors located at TPRI's Carville, LA polystyrene plant,"the company said in the force majeure letter. Total did not immediately reply to a message Wednesday seeking comment on the operational status of the facility and the force majeure. Total's PS facility has capacity of 1.45 bln lbs/year (660,000 mt/year).

As MRC informed previously, earlier this year, France’s Total S.A. embarked on studies and economic evaluation for construction of a petrochemical complex in Iran’s Parsian Special Economic Energy Zone. Undoubtedly, Total oil company of France has been the most active European firm in the Iranian oil, gas and petrochemical industries over the past six months. The French company conducted several talks with Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI), National Petrochemical Company (NPC) as well as with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

Along the same line, a delegation comprising Total representatives made a visit to Parsian Special Economic Energy Zone in southern Iranian province of Hormozgan. The visit was made following the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which was inked last year between Total S.A. and Iran’s NPC over designing, constructing, installing and implementing of a petrochemical complex. The French company aims to launch economic evaluation studies for construction of a proposed polyethylene complex in the area.

Total S.A. is a French multinational oil and gas company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world with business in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. The company's petrochemical products cover two main groups: base chemicals and the consumer polymers (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene) that are derived from them.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Japanese oil refiner Idemitsu Kosan Co. has resumed operations at its 24 Mbpd vacuum distillation unit of its 160 Mbpd Hokkaido refinery after the unit caught fire in early August, reported Reuters.

The company resumed operations at the unit last week-end. There has been no impact on its shipments, a spokesman said.

The fire went out soon after the company conducted the emergency shutdown of the unit.

As MRC wrote before, Japanese refiner Idemitsu Kosan Co. and smaller rival Showa Shell Sekiyu agreed in June 2016 that they would merge on April 1 next year. Japan's No.2 and No.5 refiners by revenue agreed last November in a deal worth approximately USD4 B to create the nation's second-biggest refiner sometime between October 2016 and April 2017.

The heads of Japanese oil refiners Idemitsu Kosan Co. and Showa Shell Sekiyu met in early August to re-confirm the companies' intention to merge despite opposition from Idemitsu's founding family. The Nikkei business daily reported that Idemitsu was considering acquiring a smaller stake in Showa Shell than planned to counter efforts by its founding family to block a merger of the two oil refiners.

Idemitsu Kosan is a Japanese petroleum company. It owns and operates oil platforms, refineries and produces and sells petroleum, oils and petrochemical products. The company runs two petrochemical plants in Chiba and Tokuyama. The two naphtha crackers can produce up to 997,000 tonnes of ethylene per year.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Tianjin Lianhe, a subsidiary of China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), has shut a linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant for a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the company has halted operations at the plant on August 10, 2016. It is slated to remain off-line for period of around 4 weeks.

Located in Tianjin city, China, the plant has a production capacity of 120,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed previously, on 30 May 2016, Sinopec SK (Wuhan) Petrochemical, another subsidiary of Sinopec, brought on-stream its LLDPE/high density polyethylene (HDPE) swing plant in China. It was taken off-line on 07 April, 2016 for a maintenance turnaround. Located in Hubei province, China, the plant has a production capacity of 300,000 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.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- LyondellBasell Industries, one of the world's largest plastics, chemical and refining companies, returned its 260 Mbpd Houston refinery to normal operations this week, one day after a power interruption on a unit cut production in half, sources familiar with plant operations said, reported Reuters.

The sources said the refinery's output had been at full capacity when the sulfur recovery unit lost power Tuesday afternoon, but production was cut, amid worker evacuations and orders to shelter in place, to about half capacity following the power interruption.

Due to the quick restart of the SRU, the refinery's production is expected to return to full capacity within a few days, the sources added.

Last month, the company said the refinery's production averaged 73% of capacity during Q2 as Lyondell performed extensive repairs to a coking unit damaged in an April 8 fire. It also said the refinery was not able to run at full production until the coker restarted July 15.

Flaring from the refinery lasted for about eight hours beginning at 2 p.m. CDT Tuesday, the sources familiar with the plant's operation said.

In a notice filed by the refinery on Wednesday with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Lyondell said an estimated 592,500 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 6,400 pounds of hydrogen sulfide were released into the atmosphere during flaring from the refinery.

The Houston Ship Channel was shut for about 20 minutes Tuesday afternoon so the crew of a ship on the waterway north of the Lyondell refinery would not be exposed to the facility's hydrogen sulfide release, the US Coast Guard said.

A sulfur recovery unit extracts sulfur from hydrogen sulfide removed from motor fuel feed stocks in compliance with US environmental rules.

As MRC informed earlier, in August 2016, LyondellBasell made the final investment decision to build a high density polyethylene (HDPE) plant on the US Gulf Coast. The plant will have an annual capacity of 1.1 billion pounds (500,000 metric tons) and will be the first commercial plant to employ LyondellBasell's new proprietary Hyperzone PE technology. The start-up of the new plant is scheduled for 2019.

LyondellBasell is one of the world's largest plastics, chemical and refining companies. The company manufactures products at 57 sites in 18 countries. LyondellBasell products and technologies are used to make items that improve the quality of life for people around the world including packaging, electronics, automotive parts, home furnishings, construction materials and biofuels.
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