Praxair expands hydrogen supply to Motiva Port Arthur refinery

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Praxair, Inc. has expanded its long-term hydrogen supply agreement with Motiva Enterprises LLC. Under this new agreement, Praxair will increase the amount of hydrogen it supplies to Motiva’s approximately 600,000 barrel per day refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Motiva completed a hydrocracker and diesel hydrotreater capacity expansion in 2016, and this agreement secures the additional hydrogen required to support that expansion, as well as the ongoing needs of the refinery.

Hydrogen is used by refiners to produce ultra-low sulfur diesel and other clean transportation fuels. Demand for these fuels continues to increase as companies comply with stricter environmental regulations and standards. Praxair began delivering hydrogen to the refinery in 1992 as one of the first customers on its gas hydrogen pipeline system. Since that time, Praxair’s system and capabilities have grown significantly and the refinery itself has undergone several expansions and it is now North America’s largest.

“Praxair is committed to being the preferred hydrogen provider in the Gulf Coast, and we are pleased to extend and expand our long-term agreement with Motiva,” said Dan Yankowski, Praxair’s president of Global Hydrogen. “Due to our record of safe and reliable supply, over many years we’ve enjoyed a mutually-beneficial commercial relationship with Motiva, and we look forward to continuing to meet the growing needs of their world-scale refinery.”
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - India’s Reliance Industries has declared a 30 percent increase in the installed capacity of its export-focused oil refinery, a government report showed, increasing the size of the world’s largest refinery complex. India’s Petroleum Planning & Analysis Cell (PPAC) in its October report showed 35.2 million tonnes a year as the installed capacity of Reliance’s refinery in the special economic zone (SEZ) at Jamnagar, in northwest India, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

That is up from 27 million tonnes, or 540,000 barrels per day (bpd), as of April 1 that PPAC reported in an August 2017 report. The new capacity is the equivalent of 704,000 bpd of crude processing. Reliance built its first refinery at Jamnagar with an installed capacity of 660,000 bpd in 1999. This refinery sells most of its fuels in the local market. The SEZ plant was added in 2008 and turned the entire Jamnagar complex into the world’s largest oil processing site.

Two sources familiar with the matter confirmed that Reliance has declared the increased SEZ capacity, which they said the company attributed to debottlenecking, or a by streamlining the processes at the plant. “They have declared enhanced capacity,” said one of the sources by telephone, without providing details on how the company raised the capacity.

Reliance has been consistently operating its export-oriented refinery at a rate higher than the nameplate capacity. Reliance had no immediate comment on the increase when contacted by Reuters. Although most of the products from the SEZ plant are meant for overseas market, some like cooking gas are sold in local markets. Reliance’s refineries are among the most complex in the world and have facilities that can maximize the production of diesel and gasoline from so-called heavy, or higher density, crude oil that typically sells for less than other crude grades.

Reliance, in a presentation to India’s Center for High Technology (CHT), said it wanted to raise the capacity of its Jamnagar complex to 100 million tonnes a year by 2030, sources last year told Reuters. CHT is a unit of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas that evaluates projects and assesses their technological requirements.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- ARLANXEO raises its prices for Ethylene propylene diene rubber grades (EPDM) globally, as per the company's press release.

In Europe, Middle East and Africa the price adjustment will be up to 125 EUR per metric ton and effective as of January 15th, 2018.

In Latin America and APAC (excl. Greater China) will be up to 150 USD per metric ton and effective as of January 15th, 2018.

In Greater China ARLANXEO has contacted its customers individually regarding a price increase in December.

ARLANXEO distributes EPDM rubber under the brand name Keltan. EPDM products are used in applications like automotive, building and construction, plastics modification, consumer goods, cable and wire, and tubes.

Arlanxeo was established in April 2016 as a joint venture of Lanxess - a world-leading specialty chemicals company based in Cologne, Germany - and Saudi Aramco - a major global energy and chemicals enterprise headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The two partners each hold a 50-percent interest in the joint venture. The business operations of ARLANXEO are assigned to the High Performance Elastomers and Tire & Specialty Rubbers business units. As MRC wrote before, in September 2015, Lanxess was in talks to put its main synthetic rubber business into a joint venture with petrochemicals group Ineos. Lanxess also held talks with Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) and Russia's NKNK and Sibur.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - PetroChina has nearly doubled the amount of Russian crude being processed at its refinery in Dalian, the company’s biggest, since January, as a new supply agreement has come into effect, a senior industry source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The Dalian Petrochemical Corp, located in the northeast port city of Dalian, is expected to process 13 million tonnes, or 260,000 bpd of Russian pipeline crude this year, up by about 85 to 90 percent from last year’s level, the source said. Dalian has the capacity to process about 410,000 bpd of crude. The increase follows an agreement worked out between the Russian and Chinese governments under which Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft will supply 30 million tonnes of ESPO Blend crude to PetroChina in 2018, or about 600,000 bpd. That would represent an increase of 50 percent over 2017 volumes. The additional oil sent to Dalian is about 120,000 bpd and will make up the bulk of the Russian increases.

The increased pipeline supplies will displace seaborne shipments of ESPO crude through the Far East port of Kozmino and shipments from the Middle East that Dalian has previously taken, the source said. “The plant will be processing pipeline crude only this year,” said the source, adding that the plant also takes in pipeline crude from the PetroChina-run Daqing oilfield in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. A PetroChina spokesman did not immediately respond to request for comment.

PetroChina has designated three refineries in northeast China - Dalian, Liaoyang and Jilin - as the main receiving points for the increased Russian supply. Liaoyang will begin taking more crude once a major upgrade is completed at the end of this year. The new volumes will flow as a result of Russia and China expanding the East Siberian Pacific Ocean pipeline that starts at Rosneft’s oilfields in East Siberia and enters China at border town of Mohe.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- SP Chemicals has restarted a vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) plant following an unplanned shutdown, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the company has resumed operations at the plant last weekend. The plant was shut on January 10, 2017 owing to power disruption.

Located at Taixing in Jiangsu province, China, the plant has a production capacity of 500,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote before, SP Chemicals undertook a planned shutdown at its styrene monomer (SM) plant at Jiangsu on November 6, 2017. The plant remained under maintenance for about 4 weeks. Located at Taixing in Jiangsu province of China, the plant has a production capacity of 320,000 mt/year.

SP Chemicals, a Singapore-based company is one of the largest ion-membrane chlor-alkali producer and aniline producer in the PRC. SP Chemicals engages in the manufacture and sale of the chemical industry's basic building blocks - caustic soda, chlorine, hydrogen and its related downstream products. The company's products include: aniline, caustic soda, chlorine, chlorobenzene, nitrochlorobenzene, nitrobenzene, vinyl chloride monomer (VCM). To further drive its growth, SP Chemicals plans to invest approximately RMB1.1 billion in facilities for the production of styrene monomer, an intermediate raw chemical used in making polystyrene plastics, protective coatings, polyesters and resins.
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