Trinseo announces quarterly dividend

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinseo, a global materials solutions provider and manufacturer of plastics, latex binders and synthetic rubber, has announced that its Board of Directors authorized a quarterly dividend of USD0.36 per share, as per the company's press release.

The dividend will be a cash distribution payable on January 23, 2018, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on January 9, 2018.

As MRC wrote before, Trinseo and its affiliate companies in Europe increased prices for all polystyrene (PS), polycarbonate (PC), acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and acrylonitrile-styrene copolymer (SAN) grades. Effective December 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 EUR95 per metric ton;
- STYRON and STYRON A-TECH high impact polystyrene grades (HIPS) - by EUR95 per metric ton;
- CALIBRE Polycarbonate Resins - by EUR200 per metric ton;
- MAGNUM ABS resins - by EUR60 per metric ton;
- TYRIL SAN resins - by EUR85 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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MOSCOW (MRC) — ExxonMobil Corp will urge Massachusetts' top court on Tuesday to allow it to avoid handing over records to the state's attorney general amid a probe into whether the oil company misled investors and consumers about its knowledge of climate change, as per Reuters.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to hear arguments over Exxon's bid to overturn a lower-court ruling that required the company to turn over documents to Attorney General Maura Healey as part of the investigation.

Healey, a Democrat, and New York Democratic Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sought records after news reports in 2015 about how Exxon's own scientists determined that reducing fossil fuel combustion was needed to mitigate the impact of climate change. Healey's office says those documents from the 1970s and 1980s suggested that Exxon failed to disclose what it knew to consumers and investors and engaged in a campaign to sow doubts about the science of climate change.

Exxon contends that the documents, published by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times, were not inconsistent with its public positions.

After Healey issued a civil investigative demand for documents in April 2016, Exxon filed a lawsuit challenging the records request and another case in federal court challenging her and Schneiderman's investigations.

In January, Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Heidi Brieger denied Exxon's request for an order exempting it from handing over the documents.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- India’s state-run Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd has made its first purchase of US crude oil, buying high-sulfur grade Southern Green Canyon through a buy tender for an early February delivery, the head of its refinery said, reported Reuters.

MRPL bought a 1 MMbbl cargo for a Feb. 1–10 delivery, M. Venkatesh told Reuters.

Other Indian refiners - Indian Oil Corp Ltd, Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd and Reliance Industries Ltd - have also bought US oil in recent months.

"Pricing is competitive to the similar grades from other regions," Venkatesh said. "As long as it (US crude) is economical we will try exploring it."

Venkatesh declined to give details on pricing or say who was the seller of the US oil.

He also declined to elaborate on the award of a separate MRPL buy tender for 1 MMbbl of sour grades for January loading.

Trade sources said MRPL bought Oman crude in the January tender. Both cargoes were sold by Royal Dutch Shell, one of the sources said.

A Shell official in Singapore said the company does not comment on commercial agreements or the movement of cargoes.

Venkatesh said a delayed coker unit at MRPL’s 300,000 bpd coastal refinery is operating at full capacity since end-November, making it possible for the plant to resume processing high sulfur crude grades.

The 3 MMtpy coker unit had been operating at half of its capacity for about 45 days due to a technical glitch.

As MRC wrote before, in June 2015, MRPL successfully commenced commercial production of PP from its polypropylene plant as part of its phase-III refinery expansion and upgradation project in Mangaluru. The plant has a capacity to produce 4,40,000 tonnes of PP per annum. Feedstock for the PP plant - polymer grade propylene - is being produced from upstream petrochemical fluidised catalytic cracking unit of the refinery. Technology provider for the PP plant is Novolen of Germany. The plant has been engineered and constructed by Engineers India Ltd.

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), is an oil refinery at Mangalore and is a subsidiary of ONGC, set up in 1993. The refinery is located at Katipalla, north from centre of Mangalore city. The refinery was established after displacing five villages of Bala, Kalavar, Kuthetoor, Katipalla, and Adyapadi.
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MOSCOW (MRC) — Emerson announced it has completed the purchase of Paradigm, a leading provider of software solutions to the oil and gas industry, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The combination of Paradigm with Emerson’s Roxar software business creates a comprehensive Exploration & Production (E&P) software portfolio offering.

Paradigm is headquartered in Houston and has more than 500 employees globally. The company provides an array of tools that enable customers to gain deeper insight into the subsurface, reduce uncertainty and support responsible asset management.
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MOSCOW (MRC) — Indian oil refiners are drawing up plans to use petroleum coke for power generation and to produce syngas after the government banned use of the heavily polluting fuel in and around New Delhi, said Reuters.

The country's top refiner Indian Oil Corp (IOC) and other refiners have invested billions of dollars in recent years to install delayed coker units to produce high-value added products such as gasoline and liquefied petroleum gas.

The units produce petcoke as a byproduct, equivalent to 25%–30% of a unit's capacity, which refiners sell to local industries. But after the Supreme Court imposed a ban on petcoke in New Delhi and three surrounding states from last month to fight pollution, refiners are having to rethink what they do with the fuel.

IOC supplied petcoke from some of its plants, mainly in northern India, to industries in Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh—the states where it is now banned. It is still producing petcoke but diverting it to regions where it is not banned, its chairman Sanjiv Singh said on Tuesday.

The oil ministry has also asked state refiners to consider setting up petcoke gasifiers, a government source said. IOC is evaluating building a 2 MMtpy petcoke gasifier costing USD2.3 B–USD3.1 B at its 300,000-bpd Paradip refinery in eastern India, its chairman said. Gas made from petcoke can be used internally in refineries and at petrochemical plants.

"Normally petcoke gasifiers are large and capital intensive. A possibility is that we can build one gasifier for two to three refineries," Singh said. IOC operates 11 refineries in India.

Reliance Industries, owner of the world's biggest oil refining complex, has set up petcoke gasifiers to produce gas for internal needs using 6.5 MMtpy petcoke produced at its two refineries.
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