Chevron Phillips completes PAO capacity expansion at Texas plant

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP (Chevron Phillips Chemical) announced it has successfully completed a low viscosity polyalphaolefins (PAO) capacity expansion at its Cedar Bayou plant in Baytown, Texas, said the company on its website.

The 20% capacity expansion enables the company to meet the increasing demand for lubricants in automotive and industrial applications. Chevron Phillips Chemical develops and produces PAOs, marketed under the brand name Synfluid PAO, which are used for a variety of applications including engine oils, gear oils and greases.

The project improves process safety and overall unit efficiencies while reducing waste generation for Cedar Bayou’s PAO unit. The feedstock for the new unit will be provided from Cedar Bayou’s recent 100,000-metric-tpy expansion of its normal alpha olefins capacity.

Construction began in April 2016 and supported up to 135 construction and engineering jobs.

Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Chevron Corporation is the the second-largest integrated energy company in the United States and among the largest corporations in the world. With a net income of USD21.42 billion in 2013, Chevron is involved in upstream activities including exploration and production, downstream activities including refining, marketing and transportation, and advanced energy technology. Chevron is also invested in power generation and gasification processes.

Phillips 66 is a diversified energy manufacturing and logistics company with a portfolio of integrated businesses: Midstream, Chemicals, Refining, and Marketing and Specialties. The company processes, transports, stores and markets fuels and products globally. Phillips 66 Partners, its master limited partnership, is an integral part of the portfolio.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Effective 1 June, or as contracts allow, BASF increased prices for numerous pigments by up to 15% worldwide, said the producer on its site.

The price increase predominantly affects phthalocyanine and inorganic pigments used in the coatings, plastics and printing industries. The price adjustments are necessary due to higher raw materials costs e.g. copper, TiO2 or cobalt, as well as further challenging environmental, health and safety costs.

As MRC reported earlier, BASF formed a global business unit (GBU) combining all of its pigments activities effective January 2016. In the second half of 2016, BASF carved out its pigments business and establish separate legal entities.

BASF is the largest diversified chemical company in the world and is headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany. BASF 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 generated sales of about EUR58 billion in 2016.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Technology company The Linde Group has been awarded a major contract by PJSC Nizhnekamskneftekhim (NKNK) to supply an olefin plant in the city of Nizhnekamsk, located in the Republic of Tatarstan in the Russian Federation. Both partners officially signed the agreement in St. Petersburg, Russia, as per Linde's press release.

A further agreement covering strategic cooperation between Linde and the TAIF Group was also concluded in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Minister President of Bavaria Horst Seehofer and President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov.

PJSC Nizhnekamskneftekhim is one of Europe's largest petrochemical companies and a member of the TAIF Group.

"This large-scale project, coupled with plans for a strategic alliance with the TAIF Group, take our successful collaboration to a whole new level," said Dr. Aldo Belloni, Chief Executive Officer of Linde AG. "It also gives us a strong footing to position ourselves for further contracts in the industrial gases and plant engineering sector in this key Eastern European growth market."

As part of this major contract, Linde is responsible for licensing, design, material procurement and technical engineering consulting for the plant.

NKNK’s new olefin complex will be built in Nizhnekamsk, Tatarstan, at what is currently Eastern Europe's largest petrochemical hub. In the first expansion stage, it will have the capacity to produce 600 Mt of ethylene and over 600 Mt of other chemical products per year. The annual production capacity will be doubled in the future through the addition of a further plant. Linde also aims to support NKNK in the subsequent project phases.

The new plant is a naphtha cracker that thermally breaks down hydrocarbon feedstocks - naphtha in this case - into olefins such as ethylene, propene and butadiene. These are then used as feedstocks for manufacturing various plastics. The new olefin plant is scheduled to go on stream in 2022.

As MRC informed previously, in early 2016, Linde AG agreed with Gazprom to build a gas processing plant in eastern Russia. The plant will be part of Gazprom’s pipeline taking gas from eastern Siberia to China. The Amur Gas Processing Plant will be one of the largest in the world, with capacity of up to 49 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually. The plant will be constructed in five phases due for completion in 2024.

The Linde Group is a world-leading gases and engineering company with around 62,000 employees in more than 100 countries worldwide.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- TechnipFMC has signed a cooperation agreement with Pall Corporation to market, design and supply proprietary slurry oil filtration systems for fluid catalytic cracking units (FCCUs), as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Based on Pall technology, the filtration systems are used by refiners to remove catalyst fines from slurry oil, an FCC main fractionator bottoms product. The clarified oil can be blended into fuel oils that must meet stringent particulate requirements. It can also be used as a feedstock for plants that produce premium products, such as carbon black and anode grade coke.

The agreement combines TechnipFMC’s global strength in FCC technology with Pall’s expertise in the development of specialty filtration systems and the fabrication of advanced filter media.

"As a major licensor of FCC technology, TechnipFMC is pleased to offer filtration systems which will help refiners meet increasing environmental regulations and improve the value of their supply chain," said Stan Knez, Senior Vice President, Onshore Process Technology for TechnipFMC.

The associated activities will be managed by TechnipFMC Process Technology’s center in Houston, Texas, which has significant refining technology experience. The center is part of a global network of centers that look after the company’s expanding portfolio of onshore process technologies in petrochemicals, refining, hydrogen and syngas, polymers and gas monetization.

With its FCC alliance partner, Axens, TechnipFMC has licensed 61 grassroot FCCUs and performed more than 250 revamp projects.

As MRC informed before, France’s Technip S.A. plans to complete work on design engineering as part of the construction of oil and gas processing and petrochemical complex (GPC) in Azerbaijan in the 2H 2017.

Besides, earlier, in 2014, Technip was awarded a contract by Westlake Chemical to provide detailed engineering and procurement services to expand the recovery section of Westlake’s Petro 1 ethylene plant at its complex in Sulphur, Louisiana, USA.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Bayer AG is reducing its holding in Covestro by way of an accelerated bookbuilding procedure with a targeted volume of EUR 1 billion. In addition, Bayer AG is offering EUR 1 billion of bonds exchangeable into Covestro shares maturing in 2020, said the company on its website.

The two placements started on Tuesday after the stock market close and are addressed to institutional investors only. Barclays and Morgan Stanley are acting as joint bookrunners. In the context of the placements, Bayer has agreed to a lock-up period of 90 days.

Furthermore, Bayer will deposit 8 million Covestro shares in Bayer Pension Trust e. V., a contractual trust arrangement for pension finance, in the near future. The package amounts to 4 percent of Covestro’s shares and will be subject to the same lock-up period of 90 days.

The transactions offer Bayer the opportunity to further reduce its holding in Covestro. Covestro will continue to be fully consolidated in Bayer’s financial statements since Bayer should continue to hold the majority at a Covestro annual stockholders meeting after these transactions are completed. As previously announced, Bayer aims to achieve full separation from Covestro in the medium term.
MRC