Univar to distribute BASF care chemicals

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Univar Inc., a global chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value-added services has announced the expansion of their agreement with BASF to include the Care Chemicals business for the US Home, Industrial & Institutional, as well as Vehicle Care product lines, as per CISION PR Newswire.

As a leading supplier in North America, and with dedicated technical experts to help customers overcome their formulation and application challenges, Univar serves as a trusted advisor to customers in the Household & Industrial Cleaning (HIC) segment. BASF's Care Chemicals business offers a broad portfolio of products for the hygiene, personal care, home care, industrial & institutional cleaning, as well as technical applications. Additionally, BASF's leading position in the HIC market coupled with Univar's breadth of technical services, global network reach, and industry leading digital commerce platform, provides unmatched support for customer formulation needs.

"This expanded agreement means Univar customers will enjoy access to the complete range of HIC products within BASF's portfolio, while also enjoying the support of our dedicated HIC labs across the country and technical experts with excellent formulation competency. We continue to assess market needs so that we can offer our customers products and services designed to help them overcome challenges," said Aaron Lee, Univar's director of surfactants, chelants and HIC.

"Customers will also continue to benefit from our digital market leadership through the MyUnivar.com platform with its 24/7 access from any device, document downloads, two-click reordering, and Univar's entire catalog at their fingertips. By serving this market with these product lines, we will help customers stay ahead of industry trends like "Safer Choice," which will continue to gain popularity as millennials' buying power increases, and as regulations like REACH continue to expand," said Brian Jurcak, Univar's vice president of product management.

Founded in 1924, Univar is a global chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value-added services, working with leading suppliers worldwide. Supported by a comprehensive team of sales and technical professionals with deep specialty and market expertise, Univar operates hundreds of distribution facilities throughout North America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.

As MRC informed previously, in December 2017, BASF’s Coatings division inaugurated a new automotive coatings plant at its Bangpoo manufacturing site, Samutprakarn province, Thailand. The new plant is the first BASF automotive coatings manufacturing facility in ASEAN, and will produce solventborne and waterborne automotive coatings to meet growing market demand in the region.

BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF generated sales of EUR64.5 billion in 2017.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- By adopting advanced automation technologies and new processes, unconventional oil and gas operators can move from average to top-quartile performance, capturing up to USD7 billion in profits annually, according to a recent study conducted by Emerson and industry benchmarking firms of onshore producers in the lower 48, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

In a "lower-for-longer" oil price environment, many companies are turning to Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies and the promise of digital transformation to help embed expertise in work processes, improve production and begin the path to operational excellence. Emerson’s Operational Certainty™ program helps oil and gas operators confidently deploy a digital transformation strategy in a targeted, scalable and measurable manner. Emerson estimates an average operator that adopts a comprehensive improvement program could see profitability improve by as much as 10 percent.

The analysis shows higher production rates, lower lease operating expenses (LOE) and a reduction in safety risks have the greatest impact on overall operational improvements. Improvement in these areas matters most to liquids-weighted unconventional oil and gas operators and helps them achieve top quartile performance. Top Quartile is defined as achieving operations and capital performance in the top 25 percent of peer companies and requires changing historic work processes across multiple functions.

For unconventional oil and gas operators, Emerson identified key technologies to quickly improve operations in a scalable way:
• Optimizing production with automated production surveillance, modeling and analytics and implementing produced fluids management techniques to reduce lost and unaccounted-for production
• Improving equipment reliability by leveraging analytics and automation diagnostics to lower LOE, providing greater visibility of costs per well
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- As part of the comprehensive partnership announced in 2017, Total has signed an agreement with Sonatrach to launch the engineering studies for a petrochemical project in Arzew, western Algeria, as per the company's press release.

The project includes a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit and a polypropylene production unit with an output capacity of 550,000 tons per year. The project represents an investment of around USD1.4 billion by the two partners (Sonatrach 51%, Total 49%), who are planning to start the front-end engineering and design (FEED) this summer, subject to approval by the relevant Algerian regulatory authorities. The facility will valorize propane, produced in large quantities locally, by transforming it into polypropylene, a plastic for which demand is growing strongly. It will supply in priority the local and Mediterranean demand and Total will be responsible for the commercialization of the rest of the production in Europe, where it will leverage its market expertise to the benefit of both partners.

"This project in Algeria illustrates our petrochemical growth strategy which consists of expanding our activities from competitively advantaged feedstock, especially derived from gas, to take advantage of the growing global plastics demand. This polypropylene project complements our other projects announced recently in the United States, in the Middle-East and in Asia, which are primarily focused on polyethylene” commented Patrick Pouyanne, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Total. "It is also an opportunity to strengthen our cooperation with Sonatrach, by moving beyond our long-standing exploration and production relationship to invest in the downstream together."
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Clinton Complex of LyondellBasell, one of the world's largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies, celebrated its 50th anniversary commemorating the plant's rich history and the strong economic impact the plant has had on Clinton, IA, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

"I am so proud of the men and women who have come through the doors here, who have built careers and raised generations of families in this community," said Bob Patel, chief executive officer of LyondellBasell. "I want to thank all of the staff, past and present, who have made today possible and my gratitude to the city of Clinton, the great state of Iowa and the leaders here today that have supported common sense policies that allow businesses to grow and thrive."

The Clinton Chamber of Commerce kicked off the event with a ribbon cutting ceremony recognizing the investment LyondellBasell recently made into a centralized operations center. The nearly $50 million operations center features a state-of-the-art control room, maintenance shops and testing laboratory with the most cutting-edge equipment in the industry.

"In addition to employing hundreds of Iowans and engaging and investing considerably in their community, LyondellBasell's impact extends beyond Clinton to the entire state of Iowa," said Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. "For fifty years, they've been a solid contributor to our economy's billion-dollar manufacturing industry, and I'm confident Iowa can depend on them to continue to advance the products and packaging the entire world relies on every day."

Over five decades, the Clinton Complex has invested extensively in the economic growth of the Clintoncommunity with expansions that have more than tripled the original planned production from 380 million pounds to 1200 million pounds per-year with their most recent expansion of 100 MM pounds increase in capacity.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- SABIC and ExxonMobil said that they have created a new joint venture to advance development of the Gulf Coast Growth Ventures project, a 1.8 million tonne ethane cracker currently planned for construction in San Patricio County, Texas, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The facility will also include a monoethylene glycol unit and two polyethylene units.

"We are very pleased to announce the creation of what is now planned to be the third joint venture between our two companies," said SABIC vice chairman and CEO Yousef Al-Benyan. "We look forward to the next phase of the project, which supports not only our goals for global diversification, but also supports Saudi Vision 2030. In addition, we are proud of the role the project will play in enhancing the economic profile of San Patricio County, Texas," Al-Benyan stated.

SABIC is the operating partner for two long-standing joint ventures with ExxonMobil in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kemya in Jubail and Yanpet in Yanbu.

Creation of the new joint venture represents a key milestone that allows the two companies to continue advancing the project, which is expected to create 600 new, permanent jobs, about 3,500 indirect and induced jobs during operations, as well as 6,000 construction jobs during the peak of construction.

"The new joint venture expands our long relationship with SABIC and builds on the success of several other joint projects," said John Verity, president of the ExxonMobil Chemical Company. "The project will create value not only for both of our companies, but for the surrounding communities through the creation of jobs and economic growth. We appreciate the support we’re receiving, and look forward to continuing our conversations with San Patricio County residents and businesses as we progress."

Construction of the project, announced in 2016, is pending completion of the environmental permitting process. The plant is expected to be operational in the 2021-2022 timeframe.

We remind that, as MRC informed before, in response to customer needs, in February 2018, SABIC announced projects in Asia and the Netherlands designed to increase global capacity for two of its high-performance engineering thermoplastic materials, Ultem and Noryl resins. The planned new production facility in Singapore is expected to go online in the first half of 2021. The company also plans to recommission operations at its Bergen op Zoom PPE resin plant in the Netherlands by the end of 2019 to produce polyphenylene ether (PPE), the base resin for its line of Noryl resins and oligomers.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) ranks among the world's top petrochemical companies. The company is among the worldпїЅs market leaders in the production of polyethylene, polypropylene and other advanced thermoplastics, glycols, methanol and fertilizers.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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