India cuts excise duty on petrol and diesel

MOSCOW (MRC) — India on Tuesday cut excise duty on petrol and diesel by two rupees a liter to protect retail consumers from higher global crude oil prices, the government said, as per Reuters.

The new excise duty will be effective from Oct. 4, the Finance Ministry said in a message on Twitter.

The finance ministry had earlier ruled out lowering excise duties on petroleum products, citing pressure on government finances.
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MOSCOW (MRC) — Buckeye Partners has resumed full operations at its oil terminal and storage tanks in Puerto Rico two weeks after it closed the facility ahead of Hurricane Maria, said Reuters.

"Buckeye has safely resumed full service of its marine, truck and tank operations at the Yabucoa, Puerto Rico Terminal Facility and is available to meet the fuel needs of the island's businesses and residents," it said in a statement.

The US oil storage and transportation company operates the 4.6 MMbbl Yabucoa oil storage facility.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) — Oil fell edged lower on Tuesday, declining for a second day and sapping more strength from a Q3 rally, amid signs that a global glut in crude may not be clearing as quickly as bulls had hoped, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

US crude was down 15 cents, or 0.3%, at USD50.43 a barrel by 0041 GMT, after closing down USD1.09 or 2.1% in the previous session. The US benchmark posted a third quarter gain of around 12%, its strongest quarterly gain since the second quarter of 2016, but has now dropped nearly 5% from a six-month high reached on Thursday.

Brent crude, the global benchmark, was down 18 cents, or 0.3%, at USD55.94 a barrel. The contract fell 67 cents, or 1.2%, in the previous session. Brent had notched a Q3 gain of about 20%, the biggest increase for that quarter since 2004 and traded as high as USD59.49 last week. It is down about 6% from that level.

Iraq said on Monday that exports rose slightly in September from its southern oilfields, while an earlier Reuters survey indicated that OPEC overall boosted output. Oil prices climbed last week on tension in Iraqi Kurdistan after the region's independence vote, with Turkey threatening to close a pipeline that brings oil from the region in northern Iraq to the Mediterranean. Turkey has not carried out the threat, analysts said.

The recent rally had also been driven by signs that a three-year crude glut is easing, helped by a production cut deal among global producers led by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

However, Middle Eastern oil producers are concerned the price rise will stir US shale producers into more drilling and push prices lower again. Key OPEC producers consider a price above USD60 as encouraging too much shale output.

One bullish sign was a letter from Libya's National Oil Company on Monday that declared force majeure on deliveries from Sharara, the country's largest oilfield.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Idemitsu Kosan is likely to brought on-stream its naphtha cracker following a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Japan informed that the company has planned to resume operations at the cracker in end-October 2017. The the cracker was taken off-line for maintenance on September 22, 2017.

Located at Chiba in Japan, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 375,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed previously, Idemitsu in July 2015 signed an agreement to acquire Shell’s 33.24% stake in its Japanese venture Showa Shell Sekiyu KK for JPY 169 billion (approximately USD1.4 billion).

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.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinseo, a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex binders and synthetic rubber, and its affiliate companies in Europe, has announced a price increase for all latex products sold into the Paper, Board, Carpet and Textile, and Adhesive and Construction Binder markets in the EMEA region, as per the company's press release.

The increase was EUR60 per dry metric ton for all latex products and was effective as of 3 October 2017 or as contract terms permit.

As MRC reported earlier, Trinseo increased prices for all polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and acrylonitrile-styrene copolymer (SAN) grades, effective September 1, 2017, 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.

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.
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