Petrobras to exit biofuels production

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Brazil's state-controlled oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA said Tuesday it will exit the biofuels sector, as the heavily indebted company seeks to prioritize investment in crude oil and gas production, reported Reuters.

Petrobras, as the company is known, said biofuels would be one sector it plans to unload as part of sweeping asset sales plan. The company reaffirmed a USD15.1 B in asset sales for the 2015-2016 period and fetch an additional USD19.5 B through divestments and partnerships between 2017 and 2018.

Petrobras has a significant portfolio in biofuels. No specifics were provided on what years the sales were planned for.

Its largest asset is a 45.9% stake in Guarani Tereos Acucar e Energia Brasil, which owns seven mills with a combined production capacity of 1.7 MMt of sugar and 900 MM liters (237.8 MM gallons) of ethanol per year.

Petrobras also owns 49% of Boa Vista mill in Goias state, a joint venture with Brazilian sugar and ethanol company Sao Martinho, and a 40% stake in the Bambui mill in the Sao Paulo state.

Petrobras also fully owns three biodiesel plants in Minas Gerais, Bahia and Ceara states and has a 50% stake in local biodiesel producer BSBIOS, which manages two large plants in the states of Parana and Rio Grande do Sul.

Sugar and ethanol prices have recovered strongly since Petrobras since the media began reporting the company planned to leave the biofuels sector early last year. Raw sugar prices hit the highest level since 2012 on Monday in New York, lifted by expectations of at least two years of a global supply deficit.

As MRC wrote before, Petrobras is seeking to sell its 5.8 billion Brazilian real (USD1.4 billion) stake in petrochemical producer Braskem SA. Petrobras owns a 36% stake in Braskem, Latin America's largest petrochemical producer. The sale would help Petrobras meet its target of selling USD15.1 billion worth of assets in 2015-16, a key part of its plan to cut debt as oil prices plunge to 12-year lows.

Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras is an integrated energy firm. Petrobras' activities include exploration, exploitation and production of oil from reservoir wells, shale and other rocks as well as refining, processing, trade and transport of oil and oil products, natural gas and other fluid hydrocarbons, in addition to other energy-related activities.
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Lotte Chemical Titan to shut LDPE unit in Malaysia

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Lotte Chemical Titan is plans to shut its Low density polyethylene (LDPE) unit for a maintenance turnaround, reported Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Malaysia informed that the company will be taking its unit off-stream in December 2016. The unit is likely to shut in early-December and expected to remian off-line until end-December 2016.

Located at Pasir Gudang, Malaysia, the LDPE unit has a production capacity of 230,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote before, Lotte Chemical Titan is studying the possibility of building a USD4 billion upstream plant to reduce imports of raw materials. Around 40% of the total investment needed for the new plant would be taken from the company’s internal cash, while the rest would be from bank loans. Lotte Chemical, which currently has a production capacity of 450,000 tons of polyethylene per year, expects the upstream plant to boost production capacity to 1 million tons by creating ethylene.

Lotte Chemical Titan produces Malaysia's most comprehensive portfolio of olefins and polyolefins which contribute to the enhancement of everyday life. Lotte Chemical Titan's production site in Malaysia consists of eleven process facilities, two co-generation plants and three tank farms. They are located on 2 sites in Pasir Gudang and Tanjung Langsat in the state of Johor. In 2006, Lotte Chemical Titan acquired PT Lotte Chemical Titan Nusantara, Indonesia’s first and largest polyethylene plant in the country. This acquisition boosted the polyolefins capacity by approximately 50%, thus making the company one of the largest producers in South East Asia. Lotte Chemical Titan was acquired by Lotte Chemical Corp., forming part of the Lotte conglomerate of Korea, in 2010. The company thus became one of Lotte Chemical Corp.’s largest overseas subsidiaries.
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Celanese developed innovations in EVA polymers

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese Corporation, a global technology and specialty materials company, has presented innovations in ethylene-vinyl-acetate (EVA) polymers, the company's press release.

"Celanese is working with its customers to develop state-of-the-art drug delivery systems using our pharmaceutical material solutions," said Susan Rahe, global business director, Celanese EVA polymers business. "VitalDose EVA polymers offer pharmaceutical companies flexibility in product design to supply excipients that can be formulated to meet demanding release criteria and regulatory requirements."

"Our broad medical and pharmaceutical polymer portfolio is creating comfortable and easy-to-use drug delivery devices and implants," said Kelsey Achenbach, strategic marketing manager for the Celanese EVA polymers business. "Improving patient care has led to recent innovations in our EVA polymer portfolio that are creating broader device and implant design options to meet changing drug delivery needs."

VitalDose EVA - acontrolled-release excipient ideal for use in pharmaceutical drug delivery implants that require a consistent release of active ingredients. VitalDose EVA polymers may be used alone or in combination with other excipients and/or additives to achieve desired release-rate profiles.

As MRC reported previously, Celanese last increased its EVA and LDPE prices on 1 May 2016, as follows: prices of Ateva EVA grew by USD50/tonne for Asia, whereas LDPE prices went up by USD0.04/lg (USD 0.09/kg or USD90/tonne) for North and South America and by USD50/tonne for Asia.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 7,000 employees worldwide and had 2015 net sales of USD5.7 billion.
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Honeywell UOP introduces IIoT software to improve plant performance

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell UOP is introducing a new software-based service designed to allow refiners and petrochemical and gas processing plants to improve performance, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Honeywell UOP’s new Connected Performance Services (CPS) business leverages the Industrial Internet of Things(IIoT) to tap Honeywell’s process knowledge, design expertise, and understanding of catalysis with next-generation software platforms from Honeywell Process Solutions.

"This cloud-enabled service makes plants smarter and more responsive," said Zak Alzein, vice president for CPS. "Problems that caused plants to be less efficient or less productive and went undetected for weeks or months now can be resolved quickly and proactively. Decisions that used to take days now can be made in hours. For many plants, the avoidance of downtime, suboptimal performance and better agility can be worth millions of dollars per year."

The CPS offerings include applications to address critical challenges for refineries and petrochemical and gas processing plants, including better asset utilization, unplanned downtime, energy efficiency, and gaps in expertise as plants becomes more sophisticated and experienced engineers retire. The CPS offerings are part of the larger IIoT ecosystem being built by Honeywell to allow end users to harness IIoT technology to tap the deep expertise of Honeywell UOP and other leading suppliers and partners.

At the heart of the CPS offering is a cloud-based software service that continuously monitors streaming plant data and applies advanced analytics and machine learning, leveraging UOP process models and best practices to find latent or emerging underperformance, alert plant personnel and make specific operational recommendations. The system runs continuously with user-friendly digital dashboards that provide highly intuitive context and actionable understanding of a plant’s performance. The same dashboards are reported simultaneously to a dedicated Honeywell UOP process advisor who also monitors performance and can provide additional direction and resources.

In addition to identifying underperforming assets and anticipating equipment failures and process issues, Honeywell can monitor and help manage energy use to support compliance with stricter regulatory standards, and also can bridge knowledge gaps among personnel who may not be fully experienced with their equipment. Roughly half of the industry’s most highly-tenured staff are expected to retire in the next seven years.

"The unique feature to this solution is the combination of customer operating data and UOP expertise that provides plant personnel with early-stage warnings that identify performance improvements," Alzein said. "Advancements in software, instrumentation and big data capabilities have finally converged, which makes it possible for the first time to offer a cloud-based IIoT solution that brings the connected plant to the oil and gas industries. That combination is made even more powerful by UOP’s century-long knowledge of process technology, equipment, catalysis and commercial best practices."

Honeywell UOP’s CPS platform is designed around the user experience, providing a practical interface that is easy to read and understand and that provides quick and easy analysis and recommendations.

By leveraging powerful embedded root cause analysis models, it puts critical performance information at the user’s fingertips to improve performance and offers predictive insights to identify issues well before they could result in costly problems.

As MRC informed previously, in 2015, Honeywell opened a new manufacturing facility in China to produce catalysts used to make components for plastics production. This new site in Zhangjiagang City, Jiangsu Province, has begun production of catalysts used to covert propane to propylene as traditional sources for this product shrink. The catalysts are used in the Oleflex process developed by Honeywell’s UOP, a global leader in technology for the oil and gas industries. Over the past four years, UOP says it has licensed its Oleflex technology to 30 producers globally, including 25 in China. The first two of these new plants came online in China last year.
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Celanese Corporation announces Pricing of Senior Notes Offering

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese Corporation, a global technology and specialty materials company, has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Celanese US Holdings LLC, priced a public offering of EUR750 million aggregate principal amount of its 1.125% Senior Notes due 2023, as per the company's press release.

The Notes will be guaranteed on a senior unsecured basis by the company and, initially, certain of the Issuer's U.S. subsidiaries.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to repay amounts outstanding under its existing senior unsecured revolving credit facility of EUR367 million (as of July 15, 2016). We intend to use the excess proceeds for general corporate purposes.

The Notes are being offered pursuant to the company's existing shelf registration statement filed with the securities and exchange Commission. A prospectus supplement, together with the accompanying prospectus, describing the terms of the offering will be filed with the SEC.

As MRC wrote before, Celanese Corporation increased list and off-list selling prices for low density polyethylene (LDPE) polymers in North and South America. The price increase was effective September 1, 2016, or as contracts allow. Thus, LDPE prices will grow by USD0.05/lb (USD0.11/kg or USD110/tonne) for North and South America.

Besides, earlier, Celanese Corporation raised its list and off-list selling prices for Ateva ethylene-vinyl-acetate (EVA) and LDPE polymers in North and South America on July 1, 2016. Prices of Ateva EVA and LDPE rose by USD0.05/lg (USD 0.11/kg or USD110/tonne) for North and South America.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Texas, Celanese employs approximately 7,500 employees worldwide and had 2014 net sales of USD6.8 billion.
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