Strike suspended at Total French refineries, depots

MOSOCW (MRC) -- A week-long strike in the French oil sector that mostly disrupted oil and gas major Total’s refineries and depot has been suspended, reported Reuters with reference to hard-left trade union CGT.

The trade union had called the strike in a dispute over salaries and bonuses.

The action had led to a suspension of production at Total’s 253,000 barrel-per-day Gonfreville refinery in Normandy. Output was also curbed at its Feyzin and Grandpuits refineries, while deliveries of refined products were blocked.

Deliveries from its La Mede and Flanders depots were also blocked.

CGT spokesman Thierry Defresne said union members have made a decision to suspend the strike as of Thursday evening.

He said the union will wait for December 11 when annual salary negotiations start at the company to ask members if they are happy with proposals made by management.

A spokeswoman for Total confirmed the suspension of the strike but gave no further details.

Patrick Pouyanne, Total’s chief executive, tweeted earlier on Thursday that he met with workers at the Feyzin refinery and reassured them about their bonuses.

Defresne said that although Pouyanne’s reassurances were heard by the workers, there was nothing binding.

As MRC wrote before, in December 2017, Total inaugurated the new units at its Antwerp integrated refining & petrochemicals platform, which have progressively started up in the last few months.

Total S.A. is a French multinational oil and gas company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world with business in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. The company's petrochemical products cover two main groups: base chemicals and the consumer polymers (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene) that are derived from them.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s privately-run Corp is expected to start partial test operations at some units around end of this year and early 2019, but a full trial operation is only expected in the second quarter of next year, reported Reuters with reference to a company executive.

"The company is planning to start trial runs at the crude unit and also some downstream units around end of the year and early in 2019," said the Zhejiang-based executive, who declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak to press.

But a detailed plan on which units will be tested and the scale of test operations would depend on the market situation, the executive added.

The company, 51 percent owned by Rongsheng Holdings, is building a 400,000 barrels per day refinery which is integrated with a petrochemical complex led by a 1.2 million-tonne per year ethylene facility.

A Rongsheng spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.

The refinery, built on an island off the archipelago city of Zhoushan in east China, is configured to process medium sour crudes such as Saudi’s Arab Medium and Oman, as well as Latin American oil.

Saudi Aramco is also expected to supply up to 170,000 bpd of crude to Zhejiang Petrochemical and has signed an initial agreement to take a stake in the company.

Two separate industry sources said Rongsheng has bought a million barrels of Brazilian medium-sweet crude Lula for end-January arrival possibly for use in the test operation.

The company has imported several cargoes of Oman crude in the fourth quarter which are stored in Zhoushan.

The plant is aiming to start test operation at the ethylene unit also in the second quarter because of "smooth construction", said the executive.

As MRC informed before, in October 2018, state oil giant Saudi Aramco announced that it would take a stake in a new refinery being built by Zhejiang Petrochemical. The oil giant expects to supply 170,000 barrels per day of Saudi crude to the refinery in Zhoushan in eastern China when it starts operation, Aramco's Senior Vice President of Downstream, Abdulaziz al-Judaimi said Reuters.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Perstorp has increased capacity of di-pentaerythritol i.e. Di-Penta with 40% at site Perstorp, as per the company's press release.

This is a result of improved efficiency and debottlenecking at all Di-Penta producing sites.

Di-Penta is used in a vast number of applications such as UV cured coatings, synthetic lubricants, high solids alkyd coatings, fire resistant Charmor coatings and lead-free PVC stabilizers. Di-Penta brings properties such as a thermo-stability, UV-stability, weather-, chemical- and scratch resistance. It’s also a very important raw material in many environmentally friendly applications.

As the largest global producer of Di-Penta, leading specialty chemicals company Perstorp, is working on all fronts to meet the increased customer demand of Di-Penta and the performance it offers. Since years back the entire industry has suffered from shortages in the Di-Penta market. To secure product availability Perstorp has worked to maximize Di-Penta production capacity which now has resulted in a capacity increase and a fully available product.

Kent Hamacek, Product Manager, Advanced Polyols & Formates says "We strongly believe in Di-Penta and will work hard to continue to grow with our customers and customer’s customer, bringing new and innovative solutions to market".

The complete strategy to meet customer demand for Perstorp Di-Penta now and in the future also includes a number of innovation projects focused on application development for complementary solutions.

As MRC reported previously, in the first half of 2017, Synthomer plc acquired Perstorp Oxo Belgium AB from the Swedish Perstorp Holding AB for EUR 78 million. Perstorp Belgium is a niche additives business serving the decorative and industrial coatings industries. In 2016, the business generated earnings before interest and tax of EUR 8 million and had gross assets of EUR 21 million. The company operates from a single site in Ghent, Belgium, and has 41 employees, who will all be transferred with the business.

Perstorp is one of the world leaders in various sectors of the specialty chemicals market, it's pioneer in formalin chemistry, plastics and surface materials. Perstorp was founded in 1881 and is controlled by PAI partners,a major European private equity company. The company has around 1,500 employees in with 22 production plants in Europe, Asia and North America.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lifted its annual blending mandate for advanced biofuels by 15 percent for 2019, while keeping steady the requirement for conventional biofuels like corn-based ethanol, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The mandate includes 4.92 billion gallons for advanced biofuels that can be made from plant and animal waste, an increase from the EPA’s initial proposal in June of 4.88 billion and above the 4.29 billion that had been set for 2018, according to the document.

The requirement for conventional biofuels remains at 15 billion gallons for 2019, on par with 2018 and the same as proposed by the agency in June.

The EPA is required to announce formally the biofuel mandate figures, which are closely watched by the rival corn and oil industries, by Friday.

Biodiesel blending credits rose 4 cents to trade at 46 cents on the report, before paring gains, two traders said.

Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, first adopted in 2005, oil refiners are required to blend a certain amount of biofuels, as determined by the EPA, into their fuel each year or purchase blending credits from those that do.

The policy has helped farmers by creating a huge market for ethanol and other biofuels, but oil refiners say compliance can cost a fortune.

The new figures confirm the agency has declined requests by the corn industry to reallocate biofuel blending obligations previously waived under the small refinery exemptions program, which has been expanded dramatically under the administration of President Donald Trump.

Small refineries can be exempted from the RFS if they prove that complying would cause them financial strain.

The powerful corn lobby and top officials in the U.S. Department of Agriculture have complained for months that the expansion of the waiver program since Trump took office threatens demand for ethanol.

An EPA official told Reuters earlier this week that the decision not to reallocate waived volumes was due mainly to timing.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Neste Engineering Solutions has been awarded the renewal of Borealis Porvoo Aromatics Plant platform covering Advanced Process Control System (APC) with NAPCON Controller, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The delivery contains over 20 NAPCON Controller applications, which control and optimize cumene, benzene and, phenol processes of the aromatics plant.

Delivery will be made with the recently released version of the NAPCON software (version 8.4.) New solutions will be implemented on virtualized hardware with a Distributed Control System (DCS) integrated web-based user interface and with a redundancy secured OPC UA connection to DCS.

"We have previously received great results with NAPCON software. NAPCON Team continuously thrives for improving the products and genuinely listen customer feedback and implement the requests based on our actual needs ", says Petteri Timonen, Automation Engineer from Borealis.

"We are happy that our good collaboration with Borealis continues and we are able to deliver continuous added value to our customer. NAPCON solutions offer, in addition to production optimization, also great savings through improved energy efficiency", says Perttu Tuomaala, Head of NAPCON, Neste Engineering Solutions.

As MRC wrote before, in March 2018, Borealis and United Chemical Company LLP (UCC) signed a Joint Development Agreement (JDA) for the development of a world-scale polyethylene project, integrated with an ethane cracker, in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Borealis is a leading provider of innovative solutions in the fields of polyolefins, base chemicals and fertilizers. With its head office in Vienna, Austria, the company currently has around 6,600 employees and operates in over 120 countries. Borealis generated EUR 7.5 billion in sales revenue and a net profit of EUR 1,095 million in 2017.
MRC