India's MRPL naphtha sales premium falls to more than 1-year low

MOSCOW (MRC) -- India’s Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd naphtha sales premium has fallen to a more than one-year low as high supplies weighed, three traders who track the deals closely said, as per Reuters.

MRPL sold 35,000 tonnes for Oct. 7-9 loading from New Mangalore to Socar at around USD10 a tonne above Middle East quotes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.

That was down from an average USD15 a tonne premium it had fetched for two cargoes sold for September loading. It was also the lowest premium MRPL has fetched since it sold cargoes for September 2017 loading.

As MRC wrote before, in August 2015, MRPL initiated its downward integration by amalgamation with ONGC Mangalore Petrochemicals Limited (OMPL).

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.
MRC

S.Africas Competition Tribunal approves Glencores bid for Chevron assets

MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Africa’s Competition Tribunal conditionally approved Glencore’s proposed USD973 million acquisition of Chevron Corp’s subsidiary in the country, all but scuppering a rival bid from China’s Sinopec, as per Reuters.

Chevron agreed last year to sell its 75 percent stake to state-owned Sinopec, before miner and commodities trader Glencore swooped in after reaching a deal with minority shareholders, who backed it and exercised preemptive rights on the sale.

The assets include a 110,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery in Cape Town, a lubricants plant in Durban as well as 845 service stations and other oil storage facilities. It also includes 220 convenience stores across South Africa and Botswana.

South Africa’s competition watchdog approved the bid in August, but the Competition Tribunal makes the final ruling on deals.

Sinopec’s bid was also approved by the competition authorities but the Tribunal said Glencore-backed OTS had right of first refusal to close the transaction.

The conditions for the proposed merger included the preservation of jobs after the deal and the continuation of CSA retirees’ medical aid subsidy among others, it said.
mrcplast.co

Wacker invests in new equipment at Jena biotech site

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Wacker has enhanced its Jena production facilities for biopharmaceuticals – also known as biologics – with new equipment. Furthermore, an inspection by the Brazilian health authority ANVISA assessing the site’s quality standards was a major success, as per Worldofchemicals.

Both developments increase the appeal of the Jena site and offer benefits to customers. The company invested €2.5 million in, among other things, a fully automated fermentation plant including a new bioreactor with a capacity of 350 litres, a new separator for efficiently isolating cells and a new GMP cell-bank suite. The suite enables independent cell-bank production and expands storage capacity for customer cell banks.

Furthermore, analytical capacities were expanded with a new micro-biology laboratory and equipment for process and product characterization. A modern eDMS system now enables the automatic handling of GMP documentation. As a result, Wacker Biotech’s Jena site is fully equipped to supply the fast-growing market for biologics. Future-oriented therapeutic agents now make up 25 percent of the global pharmaceuticals market.

Another positive signal came with the recent visit from the Brazilian health authority ANVISA. After a five-day inspection of the production facility in April 2018, the ANVISA team confirmed that the Jena site complies with the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) principles and standards for the production of high-quality active ingredients. The health authority not only praised the GMP system itself, but also the outstanding organization and the professionalism of the WACKER employees.

The pre-approval inspection by ANVISA experts was arranged, because one of WACKER’s customers intends to market its cancer medication in Brazil. Wacker Biotech has been producing the active ingredient using a new, efficient, recombinant method since 2016.

MRC

Petronas-Saudi RAPID refinery to receive first oil cargo

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A supertanker carrying the first crude oil cargo for a refinery joint-venture project between Petronas and Saudi Aramco is expected to reach Malaysia by end-September, according to trade sources and data from Thomson Reuters Oil Research and Forecast, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The very large crude carrier (VLCC) Navarin carrying 1 million barrels each of Saudi Arab Medium crude and Iraqi Basra Light crude is scheduled to reach Malaysia on Sept. 20.

The project, Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID), is a USD27 billion complex located between the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea, conduits for Middle East oil and gas bound for China, Japan and South Korea.

The RAPID complex will have a 300,000-barrel-per-day refinery and petrochemical units with a capacity of 7.7 million tonnes a year. Refinery operations are set to begin in 2019, with petrochemical production to follow in six to 12 months.

As MRC informed earlier, Petronas plans to build a C6-based metallocene linear LDPE plant and a low density polyethylene (LDPE)/ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) swing plant at its greenfield integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in southern Johor state by mid-2019. The proposed metallocene LLDPE will have a capacity of 350,000 tpa, while the LDPE/EVA will have a capacity of about 150,000 tpa. The two plants are part of Petronas' planned Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development project in Pengerang at Johor.

Petronas, short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad, is a Malaysian oil and gas company wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia. The Group is engaged in a wide spectrum of petroleum activities, including upstream exploration and production of oil and gas to downstream oil refining; marketing and distribution of petroleum products; trading; gas processing and liquefaction; gas transmission pipeline network operations; marketing of liquefied natural gas; petrochemical manufacturing and marketing; shipping; automotive engineering; and property investment.
MRC

September prices of European PE rose partially for CIS markets

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The September contract price of ethylene was settled in Europe at the level of August.
However, some European producers raised their high density polyethylene (HDPE) prices for September shipments to the CIS markets, according to ICIS-MRC Price report.

Negotiations over September polyethylene (PE) shipments from Europe to the CIS countries began last week.
On the back of stability of ethylene prices, most European producers announced a roll-over of August PE prices for the current month, except for some producers' HDPE, prices of which increased by EUR10/tonne.

Negotiations over September HDPE shipments were held in the range of EUR1,100-1,165/tonne FCA, up by EUR10/tonne from August in most cases. Mainly, only those producers, which production capacities were or will be shut for maintenance in August-September, raised their export HDPE prices. There are restrictions on September shipments because of the outages at the plants.

Prices of black PE100 remained unchanged, whereas supply of material increased. September deals were discussed in the range of EUR1,360-1,415/tonne FCA.

Deals for September shipments of European low density polyethylene (LDPE) were negotiated in the range of EUR1,045-1,090/tonne FCA, which virtually corresponds to the same figure a month earlier. There were no restrictions on LDPE shipments.
MRC