Trinseo raises September prices for polystyrene, ABS and SAN in Europe

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinseo, a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex binders and synthetic rubber, and its affiliate companies in Europe has announced price increases for all polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and acrylonitrile-styrene copolymer (SAN) grades, as per the company's press release.

Effective September 1, 2017, or as existing contract terms allow, the contract and spot prices for the products listed below rose as follows:

- STYRON general purpose polystyrene grades (GPPS) - by EUR210 per metric ton;
- STYRON and STYRON A-TECH high impact polystyrene grades (HIPS) - by EUR210 per metric ton;
- MAGNUM ABS resins - by EUR140 per metric ton;
- TYRIL SAN resins - by EUR160 per metric ton.

As MRC wrote before, Trinseo last raised its contract and spot prices for all PS and SAN grades in Europe effective July 4, 2017, or as existing contract terms allowed, as follows:

- STYRON GPPS - by EUR45 per metric ton;
- STYRON and STYRON A-TECH HIPS - by EUR45 per metric ton;
- TYRIL SAN resins - by EUR25 per metric ton.

Trinseo is a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex and rubber. Trinseo's technology is used by customers in industries such as home appliances, automotive, building & construction, carpet, consumer electronics, consumer goods, electrical & lighting, medical, packaging, paper & paperboard, rubber goods and tires. Formerly known as Styron, Trinseo completed its renaming process in 1Q 2015. Trinseo had approximately USD3.7 billion in net sales in 2016, with 15 manufacturing sites around the world, and nearly 2,200 employees.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell announced that CNPC Guangxi Petrochemical Company has successfully converted its existing pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit to Honeywell UOP Polybed PSA technology, enabling it to produce high-purity hydrogen, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The newly upgraded unit, located in Qinzhou in China's Guangxi Province, now supplies hydrogen at 99.9% purity and with increased hydrogen recovery for Guangxi Petrochemical's hydrotreating units, which use the hydrogen to extract impurities from the feedstock.

The Honeywell UOP Polybed PSA technology addresses several issues faced by many manufacturers in China, such as low recovery rates and purity, control valve leakage and poor or inconsistent performance.

The PSA process uses proprietary UOP adsorbents to remove impurities at high pressure from hydrogen-containing process streams, allowing hydrogen to be recovered and upgraded to more than 99.9% purity to meet refining needs. In addition to recovering and purifying hydrogen from steam reformers and refinery off-gases, the Polybed PSA system can be used to produce hydrogen from other sources such as ethylene off-gas, methanol off-gas and partial-oxidation synthesis gas.

As MRC wrote previously, in November 2016, China’s Jilin Connell Chemical Industry Co. selected Honeywell UOP’s Advanced methanol-to-olefins (MTO) process to tap domestic coal resources to produce ethylene and propylene. Jilin Connell is the ninth company to license the Honeywell UOP technology, which produces superior yields at lower cost compared to competing technologies. The new plant, scheduled for completion in 2017, will be located in Jilin City in China’s Jilin Province, and will convert domestic sources of methanol into 300 Mtpy of ethylene and propylene. The new plant’s offtake will be supplied to ethylene oxide and propylene oxide manufacturers currently operating in the same industrial park.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oil prices slipped on Friday in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which has killed more than 40 people and brought record flooding to the oil heartland of Texas, paralyzing a quarter of the US refining industry, reported Reuters.

Harvey, downgraded to a tropical storm and losing steam as it moved inland, shut at least 4.4 MMbpd of refining capacity.

That sparked fears of a fuel shortage before the Labor Day weekend and cut refinery demand for crude, widening the spread between US gasoline and crude.

This gasoline "crack spread" hit a high of USD27.79 a barrel on Friday, up USD10 in a week.

Brent crude for November was down 40 cents at USD52.46 a barrel by 1350 GMT. The Brent contract for October, which expired on Thursday, closed up USD1.52 at USD52.38.

US crude was last down 40 cents at USD46.83 a barrel. The contract rebounded 2.8% on Thursday but is heading for a weekly decline of around 2%.

"Natural disasters generally are negative over the medium term due to demand destruction, but in the short term the market reacts to the shortage of supply," said Jason Gammel, oil and gas analyst at US investment bank Jefferies.

The US government tapped its strategic oil reserves for the first time in five years on Thursday, releasing 1 MMbbl of crude to a working refinery in Louisiana.

An adviser to President Donald Trump told a White House briefing more oil could be released from reserves.

"We would be very comfortable tapping into that," homeland security adviser Tom Bossert told reporters.

US crude oil stocks fell sharply last week as refineries raised output with the approach of Harvey, the Energy Information Administration said.

The oil market outside the United States remains well supplied with ample production by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

As informed earlier, 29 August, benchmark European gasoline refining margins spiked nearly 9% to their highest since April after more than 2 MMbpd of US refining capacity was knocked offline by Hurricane Harvey. Harvey knocked out 13% of refining capacity in the US, the world's largest oil consumer, while the continuing rain and flooding threatened other units, including the country's largest refinery, it was said then.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ar-Razi Saudi Methanol has taken off-stream its No. 4 methanol plant at Al-Jubail, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Saudi Arabia informed that the company has halted operations at the plant early this week. The plant is expected to resume production on October 17, 2017.

Located in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, the No.4 plant has a production capacity of 850,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed before, in June 2016, Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (Sabic) became one step closer to building their first plant to process crude directly into chemicals, cutting out a link in the production chain from hydrocarbons to the finished products that go into plastics and other consumer goods.

The state-owned companies signed an agreement to study such a project to be located in Saudi Arabia, they said in a statement. A joint venture is possible if the companies decide to move ahead after the study is completed, they said. Oil companies normally refine crude into transportation fuels including gasoline and diesel and leave byproducts such as naphtha to be processed separately into chemicals.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) — Oil refiners and port facilities in Corpus Christi, Texas, were making strides resuming operations from Hurricane Harvey, but Houston and other Gulf Coast energy hubs remained flooded, said Reuters.

Their efforts, which could take weeks to complete, must be repeated across a broad swath of coastal Texas and Louisiana before America's oil and fuel production can fully recover from deep cuts caused by record flooding. Power has been restored to all four Corpus Christi-area oil refineries and the Army Corps of Engineers is conducting final surveys of the port's waterways before fully reopening early next week, according to port officials.

"We are keeping our target of a full reopen by Sept. 4," said Patricia Cardenas, a port spokeswoman. Refiners Citgo Petroleum Corp, Flint Hills Resources and Valero Energy Corp are moving to restart their plants in Corpus Christi, as is the nearby Valero Three Rivers refinery, according to sources, company officials and filings.

On Thursday, energy industry intelligence service Genscape said the Flint Hills Corpus Christi refinery restarted its largest crude distillation unit, which feeds all other units at the refinery.

All were shut by Aug. 25, hours before Harvey roared ashore just north of the city with winds over 130 mph. Those four plants together have a capacity to refine 835,979 bbl of crude oil per day, or 4.4% of the nation's total. Nearly a quarter of US refining output is offline in the wake of the storm, as other plants in Texas and Louisiana also shut.

On Thursday, the US Coast Guard began allowing vessels with up to 43 ft to enter the city's port during daytime hours. Such vessels are able to hold about 500,000 bbl of oil. The Intracoastal Waterway between Corpus Christi and Brownsville, Texas, also is open, it added.

"Getting that port up and running is just so important," said Cleo Rodriguez Jr., president and CEO of the United Chamber of Commerce of Corpus Christi. "It is the economic engine for the entire region."

Some USD100 MM of goods typically moves through the port daily, according to port officials. Rodriguez said he felt lucky Corpus Christi did not receive worse damage from Harvey, the most powerful storm to strike the state since 1961.

"Our member businesses have reported significant losses here, but so far nothing huge or catastrophic," he said. "Our neighbors, like Rockport, were not so lucky. There was complete devastation there."

He said he expected Corpus Christi business to mostly recover by the end of September.
MRC