PetroChina begins work on third phase of Rudong LNG terminal expansion

MOSCOW (MRC) -- State-controlled oil and gas producer PetroChina has officially started construction works on the third phase of the expansion project at its Rudong LNG import terminal in Jiangsu province, as per LNGWorldNews.

The third phase which started on November 26 includes the addition of two 200,000-cbm LNG storage tanks, according to a statement by CNPC, the parent company of PetroChina.

After the completion of the expansion project in 2021, the LNG facility will have three 160,000-cbm and three 200,000-cbm LNG tanks with total capacity of some 1.08 million cbm, the statement said.

The terminal, which started operations in 2011, has an annual regasification capacity of 6.5 million tonnes of LNG.

According to the CNPC statement, Rudong terminal handled 75 LNG ships or 5.75 million tonnes in the January-November period, the highest in its history.

As MRC informed previously, in January 2018, PetroChina 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 had come into effect. 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.

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) – BASF has started production of its latest fungicide innovation Revysol at its site in Hannibal. With this new active ingredient, BASF will provide farmers worldwide with a new tool to ensure healthy, disease-free crops for a longer period of time and will strengthen its leading position in fungicides, said the company.

Revysol is the first fungicide to be produced at the site in Hannibal. Pending regulatory approval, first market introductions are expected for the 2019/2020 season.

"We are pleased with the successful start of production in Hannibal. It is a significant milestone towards bringing this highly-effective fungicide to our customers,” said Markus Heldt, President of BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division. With an investment in the double-digit million euro range, BASF has enhanced an existing manufacturing system to produce the new active ingredient.

Locating the world’s first production site for Revysol in the United States emphasizes the strategic importance of this new fungicide to North American markets. “We are proud that Hannibal is the first site to produce Revysol,” said Anne Berg, Vice President Manufacturing Americas, BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division.

"This decision was based on the high level of technology and experience on the site and is an investment in its future development that will save and create new jobs."

Revysol is expected to become BASF’s new blockbuster fungicide. It has the potential of reaching peak sales above EUR1 billion. BASF has applied for registration of Revysol in 60 countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas for more than 40 crops. The proprietary compound was designed to meet the high level of regulatory standards while demonstrating an outstanding performance and selectivity in a broad range of row and specialty crops. Farmers will benefit from its fast-acting and long-lasting disease control resulting in improved farm management. Revysol will be available in customized formulations to farmers across the globe and enable them to better protect their crops under various growing conditions.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- This new, low-emission impregnating resin allows for the design of smaller and more efficient motors, and for the significant reduction of the operating temperatures of standard design motors, as per Coatingsworld.

And Voltatex 4224 is manufactured using renewable raw materials.

Voltatex 4224 has a thermal conductivity that is more than double – 0.5 and 0.9 W/mK – compared to most standard impregnating resins. Available in three viscosity adjustments – low, medium and high– it can be processed with conventional impregnation technologies such as trickling, dripping and rolling. Voltatex 4224 is a styrene- and vinyl toluene-free impregnating resin, which means that emissions are reduced to a minimum in order to create a better working environment and limit flammability as well as emissions exposure.

“The technology we have used to formulate Voltatex 4224 has resulted in a resin that improves the heat transfer from the copper winding to the steel core causing less thermal stress in motors’ components, so that motors can run more efficiently and be smaller,” said Dr. Christoph Lomoschitz, global product manager for Axalta’s Energy Solutions business.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) – BASF and the Dutch Earth observation company VanderSat are collaborating to support farmers worldwide with even more precise, satellite data-based recommendations on application of crop inputs, said the company.

VanderSat’s satellite data uses high-precision microwave technology to measure soil moisture and surface temperatures in individual field zones. The technology will be an additional data source for BASF’s xarvio Field Manager, a commercial product that for example calculates the risk of disease on a field-by-field basis, providing farmers with individually tailored application maps and optimized timing for crop protection measures.

"Knowing soil moisture levels is key to predicting yield risks and crop development more accurately,” said Ole Peters, Head of Technology Digital Farming at BASF’s Agricultural Solutions division. “By integrating VanderSat’s data into our digital farming technology, farmers will benefit from even more precise, field-zone-specific information and forecasts – both for our existing offers and for future solutions that will be enabled by this technology. It will help farmers, replace in-field soil sensors in many situations, and will ensure more efficient and sustainable use of water and crop inputs."

The microwave data from VanderSat is collected daily for every field around the world at a spatial resolution of 100 x 100 meters. It will provide a unique and independent layer of information to build the digital profile of a field in BASF’s xarvio Field Manager. “One major advantage of microwave sensing is that cloud cover does not interfere with the measurement from space,” said Richard de Jeu, founder and Chief Technology Officer of VanderSat. “We have been collecting daily information on soil moisture and temperature from different satellites for many years. As a result, we now have an archive of data that goes back more than 16 years. These elements in combination with high-resolution sensing make our satellite-derived products highly reliable for determining field-zone-specific management decisions."

Data validation and prototyping done by both companies already show that VanderSat’s satellite data is typically more consistent and representative than measurements of soil moisture and temperature from field sensors. BASF and VanderSat are now validating solutions on several hundred fields on three continents in different crops to enable farmers to make more accurate agronomic decisions.
MRC