Reliance to ship first term paraxylene from new plant to China by end April

MOSCOW (MRC) -- India's Reliance Industries Limited or RIL will make its first term paraxylene export to China from the second phase of its new 2.2 million mt/year plant at Jamnagar at end April, reported Apic-online with reference to industry sources.

Of the 35,000 mt of PX due to load from Sikka in Gujarat on the MT Bunga Angelica, 15,000 mt will be discharged at Dalian in China under term contracts, sources said.

The rest will form part of Reliance's regular shipments to the region.

The volume en route to China is output from the second phase of Reliance's aromatics plant, which a source close to the company said had been ramping up since early April and was operating at a "fairly high rate now."

The first phase of the plant was commissioned last December.

In addition, 10,000 mt of benzene output from the plant was heard to have been sold on a spot basis for May loading, industry sources said, although further details could not be verified.

The No.2 Reliance plant at Jamnagar has a nameplate production capacity of 2.2 million mt/year of PX and 500,000 mt/year of benzene.

It more than doubles RIL's PX production capacity to 4.2 million mt/year, making it the world's second-largest PX producer with 9% of global PX capacity and 11% share of global production, the company said in a statement announcing the commissioning the first phase of the plant last December.

As MRC informed previously, in April 2015, RIL successfully put into operation two plants in Dahej, Gujarat, India. The first was a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin plant, which consists of two lines with a combined manufacturing capacity of 650 KTA. The plant was built with Invista technology for continuous polymerization and Buhler AG technology for solid state polymerization. This is one of the largest bottle-grade PET resin capacity at a single location globally, and consolidates Reliance’s position as a leading PET resin producer with a global capacity of 1.15 MMTPA, the company said. The second facility was a new purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant that provides a capacity of 1,150 KTA. With the commissioning of this plant, also built with Invista technology, Reliance’s total PTA capacity increased to 3.2 MMTPA, and its global capacity share will rise to 4%.

Reliance Industries is one of the world's largest producers of polymers. The company's polymer production in 2010-11 (polypropylene, polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride) made 4,094 kilo tonnes.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell International Inc. ( HON ) reported Friday that its first-quarter attributable net income grew to USD1.33 billion from last year's USD1.22 billion. Earnings per share increased 10 percent to USD1.71 from USD1.56 a year ago, said Nasdaq.

On average, 18 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of USD1.62 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

The company said its earnings per share, at 25% tax rate, excluding 2016 divestitures, were USD1.66, compared to USD1.50 last year.

Further, for fiscal 2017, the company raised the low end of guidance by 5 cents. The company now anticipates that 2017 earnings per share will be USD6.90 to $7.10, up 7 percent to 10 percent, excluding divestitures, any pension mark-to-market adjustments, and 2016 debt refinancing charges.

For the full year, analysts expect earnings of USD7.04 per share.

Darius Adamczyk, President and Chief Executive Officer of Honeywell, said, "Honeywell reported a strong start to 2017, with over 2 percent organic sales growth, 70 basis points of segment margin expansion, and free cash flow of nearly USD800 million that was more than six times greater than 2016. ...Each of our businesses contributed."

As per MRC, Honeywell announced that Wantong Petrochemical Group is producing ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel using Honeywell UOP’s new HYT-6219 hydrotreating catalyst.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Crude oil sales from storage tanks around Singapore rose to an 11-month high in March, with nearly half of the volumes going to China and traders clearing inventories ahead of record shipments to Asia expected to arrive in April, said Reuters.

Traders sold a total of 22.6 MMbbl of crude from storage in Singapore, southern Malaysia and northern Indonesia in March, Thomson Reuters Eikon trade data showed. Around half of the volumes went to China, partly to help quench the still-growing demand from the country's independent refiners.

"Strong demand from the teapots played its part, as they feared delays to their June quota renewal, and so (they) over-bought during Q1 2017," said Virendra Chauhan, oil analyst at Energy Aspects.

China started granting independent refiners, sometimes called teapots, crude oil import rights from 2015, resulting in a surge of overseas orders in 2016. That has continued into this year, with China's overall March crude imports hitting a record at nearly 9.2 MMbpd.

Despite the large sales this pulled from Singapore storage, the inventory drawdown does not necessarily indicate that an effort led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut production to tighten supplies and prop up prices is bearing fruit.

"It's too early to say (if this means the OPEC output cut is working). Of course China buying almost 600,000 bpd more crude in Q1 2017 has helped, but we don't see that as a sustainable pace of growth," Chauhan said.

There are also concerns that while China's surging imports eat up crude volumes, they may contribute to a fuel overhang as Chinese refiners churn out more products like gasoline and diesel than the market can absorb.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Polythylene (PE) bags will be banned in Madhya Pradesh with effect from May 1, according to Plastemart.

The government chaired by the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has approved the proposal of imposing the ban from May 1.

The government has yet to chalk out of a plan, and will impose the ban on only plastic carry bags only and not other plastic related materials.

As MRC wrote before, in September 2012, the Delhi government imposed a blanket ban on the manufacture, storage and usage of plastic bags in the capital, regardless of thickness. That ban curtailed demand for PE film and coating grades, which are the raw materials in the production of plastic bags.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Reliance is pleased to announce successful and flawless completion of its Ethane Project, including commissioning of its ethane receipt & handling facilities and ethane cracking, at its Dahej Manufacturing Facility in Gujarat in a world record time of less than three years, said the company on its site.

Reliance is the first company to globally conceptualize large-scale imports of ethane from North America as feedstock for its cracker portfolio in India. The project involved seamless integration of several elements across a complex infrastructure value chain. This includes securing ethane refrigeration capacity in the US Gulf coast; delivery of dedicated Very Large Ethane Carriers (VLECs) to carry ethane from the US Gulf Coast to the West Coast of India;
construction of ethane receipt and handling facilities; laying pipelines and upgrading crackers (to receive ethane) at Dahej, Hazira and Nagothane Manufacturing Facilities.

This successful start-up underlines ours ability to build world-scale capacities and infrastructure using complex technologies, such as marine transportation of cryogenic ethane, handling of ethane at (-) 90 deg.C, supply of ethane to the crackers in an energy efficient way and pump ethane from Dahej to other locations. The execution of this project at this scale and magnitude is a first in the world.

The Shale Gas industry in North America has grown exponentially in the past 5 years. Consequently ethane has become one of the most competitively priced feedstock for US crackers.

The supply of Ethane to our crackers at Dahej, Hazira and Nagothane will provide feedstock security and flexibility, enabling us to select the most optimal feed mix based on market conditions.

This will improve the cost competitiveness of our existing crackers and enable us to optimize the portfolio in a volatile market environment.
MRC