Shell Convent refinery restarting fire-struck hydrocracker

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc is restarting a heavy oil hydrocracker at its 209,787 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in Convent, Louisiana, said sources familiar with plant operations, reported Reuters.

The 45,000 bpd hydrocracker, called the H-Oil Unit, was shut earlier on Sunday after a fire, the sources said.

"No injuries, no offsite impact," said Shell spokesman Ray Fisher.

The fire broke out at about 1:30 a.m. (0630 GMT) on Sunday, the sources said.

The H-Oil Unit is an atypical hydrocracker because it converts residual crude oil into motor fuels, especially diesel. Residual crude is normally processed by coking units.

Hydrocrackers use hydrogen and a catalyst under high heat and pressure to produce motor fuels, usually starting with gas oil as a feedstock.

As MRC wrote before, in May 2018, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Shell Nanhai B.V. (Shell) announced the official start-up of the second ethylene cracker at their Nanhai petrochemicals complex in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, China. The new ethylene cracker increases ethylene capacity at the complex by around 1.2 million tonnes per year, more than doubling the capacity of the complex, and benefits from a deep integration with adjacent CNOOC refineries. The new facility will also include a styrene monomer and propylene oxide (SMPO) plant, which will be the largest in China when it begins operations.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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Oil India Q1 net profit up 56% to Rs 7.03 bn over better crude realisation

MOSCOW (MRC) -- State-run Oil India Ltd (OIL) has posted a 56% increase in net profit to Rs 7.03 billion for the first quarter of the financial year 2018-19, compared to Rs 4.5 billion during the same period last year, owing to better crude realisation, as per Business-standard.

The company's total income for the April-June quarter of the current financial year also increased 42 per cent from Rs 24.85 billion during the first quarter of 2017-18 to Rs 35.17 billion. The rise in net profit was mainly owing to better crude realisation, which increased by USD23.59 a barrel to USD72 a barrel during the first quarter of the current financial year, as against USD48.41 a barrel. On the other hand, average natural gas price realisation during the first quarter was USD3.06 per million metric British thermal unit (mmBtu) as compared to USD2.48 per mmBtu during the first quarter of 2017-18.

Crude oil production for the quarter under review remained static at last year's level of 0.844 million tonnes (MT). However, natural gas production declined by 3.87 per cent to 696 million metric standard cubic meter (MMSCM) as compared to 724 MMSCM during the first quarter of 2017-18 due to short upliftment by certain consumers.

During the recently concluded ninth round of city gas distribution (CGD) bidding conducted by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board (PNGRB), a consortium of Oil India, Assam Gas Company and GAIL Gas was allotted two geographical areas — covering Cachar, Hailakandi and Karimganj Districts and Kamrup and Kamrup Metropolitan Districts — in the state of Assam.

The company has also formed a joint venture, named Indradhanush Gas Grid, partnering with Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation, GAIL and Numaligarh Refinery, with equal equity contribution, to construct Gas Grid infrastructure covering 1,450 kilometres of pipeline to connect eight North-Eastern States from Guwahati.
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Teijin to build new sheet moulding compound line in France


MOSCOW (MRC) -- Continental Structural Plastics Opening a new window (CSP), a Teijin Group Company, announced it will be installing a sheet molding compound (SMC) line at its facility in Pouance, France, to support the need for its industry-leading composite formulations in Europe, said the company on its website.

CSP will invest approximately EUR5.1 million (USD6 million) to establish the SMC line.

CSP is currently the largest compounder of SMC in North America, with current SMC volumes exceeding 84,000 U.S. tons annually. The installation of this SMC line in France will be used to further develop the company’s wide range of proprietary, advanced composite products, including low-volatile organic compounds (VOC) formulas currently under development to meet European market regulations. The line will be capable of producing SMCs made with both glass and carbon fibers.

"The addition of this SMC line to the Pouance facility is an important step in our European growth plans,” said Philippe Bonte, president, CSP Europe. “It will enable us to provide full-service capabilities to our customers here, as well as provide us with an opportunity to further enhance our already significant materials R&D efforts in Europe."

The Teijin Group is leveraging its lightweight, strong, high-performance materials and integrated composite technologies as one of the key focuses of the transformation strategies for the group’s medium-term management plan, under which the company aims to expand business with a view to becoming a supplier of multi-material components.

The CSP Pouance facility is an innovative, rapid development center for lightweighting technologies including carbon fiber resin transfer molding (RTM), Class A RTM and thermoplastic composites. The 12,000 square-meter (130,000 square-feet) facility was purchased by CSP in 2013.

The SMC line is expected to be commercially ready to produce SMC by the third quarter of 2019.
MRC

Settlement reached in Petrobras Texas refinery emissions case

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A US unit of Brazilian state-run company Petrobras agreed to pay USD3.5 million to settle a lawsuit over alleged toxic emissions from its Pasadena, Texas, oil refinery, reported Reuters with reference to two environmental groups.

The settlement comes in the midst of the company’s efforts to sell the refinery. The deal is subject to approval by a federal judge.

Petrobras did not respond to a request for comment.

Under the terms of the agreement, Petrobras subsidiary Pasadena Refining System Inc (PRSI) will pay USD3.175 million to Houston-area municipal governments and school districts to convert fossil-fuel-burning vehicles to electric or hybrid models, according to the environmental groups, the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter and Environment Texas.

The 112,229-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery also will pay a USD350,000 civil penalty to the U.S. government for releasing sulfur dioxide and other pollutants in excess of permitted levels and install new pollution control equipment at the refinery, according to the environmental groups.

The two organizations brought the lawsuit under a provision of the US Clean Air Act that allows citizens to bring enforcement actions in federal court against polluters.

"We brought this suit to address the repeated mechanical breakdowns and operational flaws that have plagued the Pasadena refinery for years," said Neil Carman, clean air program director for Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. "These so-called ‘emission events’ have released millions of pounds of illegal air pollution into surrounding neighborhoods."

Petrobras in February put the refinery up for sale in a two-step process that began with a non-binding phase to allow potential buyers to look over the plant.

In May, Petrobras began the binding phase of the sale with qualified partners receiving strict instructions on how to proceed with due diligence. That phase is still under way.

Petrobras purchased half the refinery in 2006 and by 2012 was its sole owner, having sunk more than USD1 billion into the plant. The purchase of the refinery was a target of the so-called Car Wash corruption investigation by Brazilian authorities. Brazilian audit court TCU said the refinery deal caused losses of more than USD580 million to the company.

As MRC wrote before, in October 2017, Petrobras’s minority stakes in Braskem and Deten Quimica was excluded from Petrobras’s divestment program, according to a government decree published in Brazil’s Official Gazette. The decree prevents Petrobras from immediately selling its minority stake in Braskem, which had been announced last year. A new decree will be required to release the stock sale.

Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras is an integrated energy firm. Petrobras' activities include exploration, exploitation and production of oil from reservoir wells, shale and other rocks as well as refining, processing, trade and transport of oil and oil products, natural gas and other fluid hydrocarbons, in addition to other energy-related activities.
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China move to drop crude off tariff list a relief for major refiner

MOSCOW (MRC) - China's decision to remove crude oil from its latest tariff list in an escalating trade war with the United States was a relief to state oil firms prompted by a strong lobbying effort by main importer the Sinopec Group, Beijing-based oil sources said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Dropping crude oil from the final tariff list on USD16 billion in U.S. goods underscores the growing importance of the United States as a key global producer and critical alternative supply source for top importer China, which is seeking to diversify its oil purchases.

Removing crude imports, worth roughly USD8 billion annually based on Sinopec's earlier forecast of 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) for 2018, also gives Beijing room to maneuver in future negotiations with Washington, especially as it may soon lose some Iranian oil shipments due to reimposed U.S. sanctions.

"Sinopec did a lot of lobbying work with the government," said one person with direct knowledge of the state refiner's efforts to sway the policy decision of various agencies such as the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce. Sinopec declined to comment.

The revision came after Sinopec - Asia's largest refiner and the biggest buyer of U.S. oil - suspended new bookings until at least October over worries that a 25 percent tariff would prohibit it from finding buyers in China.

"The U.S. will be the single largest source of new oil supplies outside OPEC. It's in China's interest to diversify supplies," said a second source, a state oil trading manager. The move could encourage Sinopec to bring in cargoes loaded in June and July, and resume new bookings, the sources said, declining to be named due to the sensitive nature of the topic.
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