S.Korea Dec exports climb for 14th month, wrap up record 2017

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Soaring global demand for memory chips and petrochemicals helped South Korea's exports surge 8.9% in December, lifting its 2017 shipments to the highest on record in value terms, reported Reuters.

Exports for the year as a whole jumped USD573.9 B or 15.8%, data showed in early 2018, making last year the best since relevant data began to be compiled in 1956.

The government is expecting still-solid but more modest export growth of 4% this year. With the economy riding the global trade boom, South Korea's central bank raised interest rates for the first time in more than 6 yr in November.

"Downside risks for South Korea are the won's strength, rising interest rates and oil prices. They are the new three risks," trade minister Paik Un-gyu said in a statement.

A further wild cards will be trade talks with the United States, which is keen to revise a 2012 deal to reduce its trade deficit with South Korea. Talks began on Jan. 5.

December's 8.9% expansion slightly underperformed the 10.3% growth forecast by economists in a Reuters poll and eased from 9.5% in November.

But six of the nation's major export products, including semiconductors, petrochemical products, computers posted double-digit expansion from a year earlier, even as the month had two fewer working days than in December 2016.

Imports jumped 13% December from a year earlier, beating the 12.1% expansion seen in the survey and 12.7% in the previous month.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - The Trump administration’s proposal to open up almost all of U.S. offshore waters to oil and gas drilling could unlock up to 65 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), attracting billions of dollars in investment, consultancy Rystad Energy said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Last week, U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said a draft program would make over 90 percent of the outer continental shelf’s total acreage available for leasing to drillers, a national record.

"Looking purely at areas that are potentially going to come out of restriction, we are talking about something closer to 65 billion boe," Sonia Passos, senior analyst at Rystad, a major independent consultancy tracking the sector, said in a note last week. (bit.ly/2CJpiyw). That figure excludes resource potential from western and central areas of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, but includes the eastern region, she said. However, the drilling proposal has since faced resistance from various quarters. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s administration said it would not allow drilling off the coast of Florida after urging from the state’s governor.

"The resource potential in the basins in the direct proximity to Florida, together may hold about 1 billion boe to 1.5 billion boe, so excluding those will not change the overall picture dramatically," Passos told Reuters on Wednesday.

The offshore sector has been overshadowed in the past few years by the shale revolution in the United States, with investors and drillers pumping the lion’s share of their resources into the Permian and other inland oil basins. In 2017, companies in the U.S. directed over 60 percent of their total investments to shale and this trend is likely to increase to about 70 percent in the coming decade, Norway-based Rystad said. The consultancy said if operators utilize the full potential of the newly unlocked offshore regions, exploration activity could reach a new peak after 2030, with some 200 exploration wells drilled per year on average. That would imply annual investment levels of about USD15 billion, Rystad said.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Taiwan's Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPC) is in plans to take its high density polyethylene (HDPE) plant off-stream, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Taiwan informed that the plant is expected to be shut for maintenance on February 24, 2017. It is likely to remain off-line until mid-March 2017.

Located at Mailiao in Taiwan, the plant has a production capacity of 320,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed earlier, FPC's 320,000 mt/year HDPE unit was shut for a few days at the end of August 2016 due to ethylene shortage while its No. 2 steam cracker went through maintenance from July 29 to September 2. Other polyethylene units, including a 235,000 mt/year low density polyethylene (LDPE)/ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) swing plant and a 260,000 mt/year linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant, were not affected and were running at that period.

Formosa has three naphtha-fed steam crackers and each goes through maintenance once every three years.

The No. 1 cracker is able to produce 700,000 mt/year of ethylene, 350,000 mt/year of propylene and 109,000 mt/year of butadiene.

The No. 2 unit is able to produce 1.03 million mt/year of ethylene, 515,000 mt/year of propylene and 162,000 mt/year of butadiene.

The No. 3 steam cracker has the capacity to produce 1.2 million mt/year of ethylene, 600,000 mt/year of propylene and 180,000 mt/year of butadiene.

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) -- Negotiations over prices of European polyvinyl chloride (PVC) for January shipments to the CIS countries started last week. Weak demand and stability of ethylene prices made European producers roll over December PVC prices for January deliveries, according to ICIS-MRC Price report.

The January contract price of ethylene was agreed at the level of December, which did not lead to an increase in the net cost of PVC production. Demand also remained weak from many export markets, which forced European producers to maintain December export prices for January shipments.

Weaker demand from a number of export markets already made European producers reduce their export PVC prices for the CIS markets back in the second half of November. Prices also dropped for these markets in December.

Negotiations over January shipments of suspension polyvinyl chloride (SPVC) to the CIS countries were held in the range of EUR715-780/tonne FCA, which virtually corresponded to the level of December prices. European producers do not have any restrictions for exports this month.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Eleven men were charged in a Singapore court on Tuesday in connection with a large-scale oil theft at Shell's biggest refinery, while police said they were investigating six other men arrested in a weekend raid, said Reuters.

Police in the island-state said on Tuesday they had detained 17 men, whose ages ranged from 30 to 63, and seized millions of dollars in cash and a small tanker during their investigations into theft at the Pulau Bukom industrial site, which sits just south of Singapore's main island.

Oil refining and shipping have contributed significantly to Singapore's rising wealth during the past decades. But the case underlines the challenges the industry faces in a region that has become a hot-spot for illegal oil trading.

The investigation began after Shell contacted the authorities in August 2017, police said in a news release. After "extensive investigations and probes," the Criminal Investigation Department, Police Intelligence Department and Police Coast Guard launched a series of simultaneous raids across Singapore, which led to the arrests.

Nine Singaporeans were immediately charged in the theft, of which eight were employees of the Singapore subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell PLC, court documents showed. Two Vietnamese nationals were charged with receiving stolen goods on a small tanker named Prime South (IMO: 9452804), the documents showed.

Shell confirmed on Tuesday that eight of the 11 men charged were current or former employees at Shell Eastern Petroleum (Pte) Ltd.

Shipping data from Thomson Reuters Eikon showed the Prime South had been shipping fuel between Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and Singapore for the past 30 days.
MRC