Exxon climate-change probe goes to Massachusetts top court

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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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Propane is trading at its widest premium to butane on a heating value basis in four years as strong US exports combined with expectations of a colder US winter than a year ago have tightened inventories, reported Reuters.

US consumers, who buy propane for home heating, are seeing costs this month up 17.2% from a year-ago, to an average USD2.434/gal, according to US Energy Information Administration data.

Demand for propane by consumers and chemical manufacturers, which use butane and propane to make plastics, is up sharply this year and US stocks have declined despite rising production.

Propane exports averaged above 1 MMbpd in 5 mos this year, according to ClipperData, compared with 770,000 bpd for all of last year.

The two fuels typically trade closely together but split as traders last month liquidated butane positions after it failed to rally and propane stocks unexpectedly rose, one trader said.

Propane on Tuesday was USD11.04/MMBtu and butane was USD9.95/MMBtu on a heating value basis at the Mont Belvieu, Texas, hub, a USD1.09 spread and the widest since a 2013 cold snap in North America sent prices soaring.

"You're seeing more abnormal price relationships because we've added all this propane-only demand," said Joseph Sevick, research director at consultants Wood Mackenzie and a former trader.

Adding to propane's premium: US winter temperatures are forecast to be 13% colder on average than last year, according to the EIA's Winter Fuels Outlook.

US propane inventories this month were 73.15 MMbbl, down 27% from 100.8 MMbbl a year earlier, the EIA reported. Stocks typically build between April and October and fall in October as heating demand rises.

"I don't think we've grasped the magnitude of how exports are going to be further drawing (propane stocks) down this winter," said a trader, who believes the spread could widen as cold weather descends.

The United States produced 1.92 MMbpd of propane in the week ending Nov. 24, up 11% from 1.73 bpd a year earlier, according to the EIA.

More than half of the propane produced in the United States is being exported today compared with just 10% in 2009, according to the National Propane Gas Association trade group. Butane exports are less than a quarter of those of propane, EIA data shows.

East Asian countries take more than 40% of exports, with Japan, South Korea and China among top buyers, ClipperData estimates.
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