Formosa Plastics plans to restart multiple units at Texas over long holiday weekend

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Formosa Plastics, part of Formosa Petrochemical, expects to restart multiple units at its Point Comfort, Texas, complex over the long Fourth of July holiday weekend following an unplanned outage, as per Plastemart.

The outage began Saturday after lightning struck a transformer, causing a power outage at a pair of olefins units, as well as the polyethylene, polypropylene, ethylene glycol and chlor-alkali plants, sources said.

Formosa could not immediately provide comments. A source with knowledge of company operations said the shutdown was having an impact on production at the site, with the outage expected to last 7 to 10 days.

The Point Comfort complex, Formosa's largest in the US, is located about 90 miles from Corpus Christi on the Texas Gulf Coast. Formosa's steam crackers produce about 3.3 mln mtpa of olefins at Point Comfort. The complex can produce almost 1.5 mln mtpa of high density polyethylene, 582,000 m tpa of linear low-density polyethylene, 1.9 mln mtpa of polypropylene (PP) and 736,000 m tpa of chlor-alkali.

As MRC reported earlier, in 2015, Formosa Plastics Corporation, U.S.A. announced that it would build a new, state-of- the-art PP production line at its Point Comfort, Texas site. This will be the first new PP production to be built in the US in many years.

Formosa Petrochemical is involved primarily in the business of refining crude oil, selling refined petroleum products and producing and selling olefins (including ethylene, propylene, butadiene and BTX) from its naphtha cracking operations. Formosa Petrochemical is also the largest olefins producer in Taiwan and its olefins products are mostly sold to companies within the Formosa Group. Among the company's chemical products are paraxylene (PX), phenyl ethylene, acetone and pure terephthalic acid (PTA). The company's plastic products include acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) resins, polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP) and panlite (PC).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petrochemicals Malaysia, a subsidiary of Idemitsu Kosan Co, is in plans to take off-stream a polystyrene (PS) plant for a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Malaysia informed that the company has schedule to shut the plant in October 2017. The plant is likely to remain off-line for around 6 weeks.

Located at Pasir Gudang in Johor state of Malaysia, the plant has a production capacity of 120,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed before, Japan's Idemitsu Kosan said in late November 2016 its JV with Mitsui Chemicals would conduct work to expand the processing of propane at Idemitsu's naphtha cracker to take advantage of cheap liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) prices.

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. Petrochemicals Malaysia is a subsidiary of Japan-based Idemitsu Kosan Co.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Production of polypropylene (PP) in Russia decreased to about 591,700 tonne in first five months of this year, down 2% year on year, compared to the same period of 2016. The decrease in PP production accounted for only twwo producers, according to MRC ScanPlast.

Russia's PP production increased to 126,800 tonnes in May, from 110,600 tonnes in April. The low figure of April was a result of scheduled maintenance works at NPP Neftekhimia and Stavrolen. Total PP production in Russia reached 591,700 tonnes in Jan-May 2017 against 603,000 tonnes, an increase showed all producers, expect Nizhnekamskneftekhim and Neftekhimia.

Structure of PP production over the reported period looked as follows.

The largest producer of PP in Russia - SIBUR Tobolsk in May produced about 46,700 tonnes against 44,300 tonnes a month earlier. SIBUR Tobolsk's PP production reached 220,500 tonnes in January-May 2017, down 1% year on year.

May production at Poliom were about 18,600 tonnes, while a month earlier this figure was 17,600 tonnes. Total PP production at the plant over the reported period was about 88,600 tonnes, up 5% year on year.

May PP production at Ufaorgsintez increased to about 11,000 tonnes from 10,600 tonnes a month earlier. The producer's PP output at Ufaorgsintez increased to 52,200 tonnes in January-May 2017 compared with 51,800 tonnes year on year.
Stavrolen (LUKOIL) in May increased capacity utilisation, having produced 10,600 tonnes of propylene polymers against 7,700 tonnes a month earlier (in April production was stopped for 10-day turnaround). Overall PP production at the plant exceeded 48,800 tonnes in January-May, down 3% year on year.

Tomskneftekhim also increased production volumes in May, and the final production of propylene polymers was 12,400 tonnes against 11,700 tonnes in April. Total PP production at Tomskneftekhim over the reported period reached 58,900 tonnes, compared with 57,500 tonnes year on year.

May PP production at Nizhnekamskneftekhim was 18,100 tonnes from 18,900 tonnes, which actually equal to the level in April. The producer's PP production in January-May decreased by 1% from last year's level to 90,800 tonnes.

Neftekhimia (Kapotnya) in March-April shut its capacity for long-term turnaround, in May the enterprise reached a 100% capacity utilisation.
Producer's PP production in May grew to 9,300 tonnes. The producer's PP output in the first five months of the year reached 31,700 tonnes, down 40% year on year.


MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mexico's antitrust watchdog said on Tuesday that it has given approval to DuPont (DD.N) and Dow Chemical Co to merge on the condition that they sell certain crop protection products and other assets, said Reuters.

The asset sales required by Mexico's Federal Economic Competition Commission (Cofece) is similar to what U.S. antitrust enforcers asked of the two companies and similar to what the firms had agreed to give up in a deal they struck with European regulators in March.

Cofece said Dow needs to sell its acid copolymers and ionomers businesses. The products are used to make food packaging and other goods. It asked DuPont to sell an insecticide business.

Dow operates six subsidiaries in Mexico, DuPont has 11 subsidiaries there.

Dow and DuPont announced the deal in December 2015 in what was billed as an all-stock merger valued at USD130 billion.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) — DuPont Clean Technologies announced that Dangote Oil Refinery Company Ltd has commissioned a range of advanced proprietary equipment from DuPont for the construction of a new refinery in Lekki, near Nigeria’s capital, Lagos, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Construction of the new refinery is part of a strategy to boost national Nigerian refinery production and the innovative DuPont technology will allow Dangote to maximize quality and profitability while minimizing its environmental impact. The new refinery is set to become the largest single-train refinery in the world and the complex will include a petrochemical plant, a fertilizer plant and a subsea pipeline project.

DuPont will be supplying Dangote with proprietary equipment for STRATCO alkylation unit, MECS sulfuric acid regeneration (SAR) unit, MECS DynaWave sulfur recovery unit (SRU) tail gas scrubbing, and BELCO EDV fluid catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) stack scrubbing that will help Dangote meet gasoline pool octane and emissions requirements.

"We are delighted to be supporting Dangote on a project that is of such critical importance to creating economic growth and opportunity in Nigeria," said Eli Ben-Shoshan, Global Business Leader, DuPont Clean Technologies. "Our aim is always to enable our customers to meet their emissions targets easily and efficiently with the help of cost-effective technologies and services that offer them value and flexibility while minimizing the impact on the environment."

The new 27,000 bpsd (1,060 kmta) alkylation unit and the 260 MMtpd SAR unit will allow the facility to produce high octane, low sulfur, low Rvp alkylate with zero olefins. Designed to meet world standards for particulate matter and SOx emissions, the DynaWave wet gas scrubber will ensure full-time compliance with emissions regulations on both 115 tpd SRUs, and the BELCO EDV wet gas scrubber will reduce the stack emissions from the FCCU as well as provide a purge treatment to condition the scrubber effluent. Both of the SRUs and the FCCU are supplied by other licensors.

Despite producing 2.12 MMbpd crude oil in 2015, Nigeria traditionally imports 80% of domestically consumed refined product as national refining capacity is low, at 0.002 bpd per capita. With a production capacity of 650,000 bpd, the new refinery, targeted for completion in the last quarter of 2019, will boost Nigeria’s limited domestic refining production.

Licensed and designed by DuPont, the STRATCO alkylation technology is the established global leader in the industry with over 90 units licensed worldwide and more than 850,000 bpsd (33,300 kmta) of installed capacity. For over 80 yr, the STRATCO technology has helped refineries safely to produce cleaner-burning fuel with high octane, low Rvp, low sulfur and zero olefins.

Also, licensed and designed by DuPont, the MECS SAR technology is the leading technology for sulfuric acid regeneration in the market. This reliable, dry gas technology produces the desired 99.2 wt% sulfuric acid strength for optimum alkylation unit performance. Reliability and on-stream time are the most important considerations when selecting an SAR technology. The MECS SAR units are designed for a high on-stream time to avoid disrupting the alkylation unit’s operation and production schedule.
MRC