Pertamina signs SK, Hyundai for USD4 billion refinery upgrade

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indonesian energy giant Pertamina has appointed South Korea’s SK Engineering & Construction Co and Hyundai Engineering Co Ltd as engineering and construction contractors for its Balikpapan refinery upgrade, reported Reuters.

The USD4 billion upgrade project - at the Balikpapan refinery in East Kalimantan province on the island of Borneo - will now start at the beginning of 2019, state-owned Pertamina executive Ignatius Tallulembang said at a media briefing.

Spokesmen for both SK and Hyundai confirmed signing the project contracts, but gave no further details.

Development will be jointly undertaken with Indonesia’s PT Pembangunan Perumahan Tbk and PT Rekayasa Industri (Rekind), Tallulembang said. When the upgraded refinery goes into operation in August 2023, it will produce fuel to the ‘Euro V’ emissions standard, he said.

Southeast Asia’s largest economy hopes to reduce its dependence on costly oil product imports, which meet around a third of its fuel needs of around 1.4 million barrels per day.

A programme launched in late 2014 to double Indonesia’s refinery output has faced multiple setbacks, and the country has continued to struggle to attract investment in the sector.

Earlier plans to upgrade Balikpapan with Japan’s JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp fell apart in early 2016, but as recently as August this year it was seeking to revive that partnership or form a new one with Azerbaijan’s Socar.

At the same event on Monday, Pertamina signed a framework agreement with Oman’s Overseas Oil and Gas LLC (OOG) to develop a new USD10 billion refinery and petrochemical complex at Bontang, also on Borneo.

State-owned OOG, which is taking a majority stake in the project, was chosen for its financial capability, Pertamina chief executive Nicke Widyawati said. Pertamina is in talks with OOG to increase its share of the project to 20-30 percent from 10 percent under the current plan, Tallulembang said.

It was not immediately clear how much of the project cost will be carried by OOG.

Widyawati declined to comment on why Japan’s Cosmo Energy Holdings, earmarked in January for partnership in the project, was not included in the latest agreement.

Over the next year, Pertamina and OOG plan to carry out a feasibility study for the project. Once completed, OOG is expected to supply 300,000 bpd of crude oil to the refinery, Tallulembang said.

Pertamina now expects all six of its refinery projects - including the Balikpapan, Cilacap, Balongan and Dumai refinery upgrades, and the Bontang and Tuban grassroots developments - to be completed by the end of 2026, Widyawati said.

"We recognize that the refineries have experienced delays (but) better late than never," Widyawati said.

As MRC informed before, in September 2018, Eni and PT Pertamina (Persero) signed in Porto Marghera, at Eni Green Refinery, a Memorandum of Understanding further expanding the relationship into green refinery.

Pertamina is an Indonesian state-owned oil and natural gas corporation based in Jakarta. It was created in August 1968 by the merger of Pertamin (established 1961) and Permina (established 1957). Pertamina is the world's largest producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Saipem reports that the restoration activities of the infrastructures hit by the cyber-attack communicated the 10th of December, 2018 have continued according to a tested and consolidated protocol and are near completion, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Saipem also confirms that there has been no theft or loss of data and that, therefore, no hindrance is expected to the prosecution of the ordinary activity.

As MRC informed earlier, Saipem said it had identified a cyber attack out of India that had primarily affected its servers in the Middle East. "We are collecting all the elements useful for assessing the impact on our infrastructures and the actions to be taken to restore normal activities," the firm said in a statement.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ARLANXEO, a leading synthetic elastomers company, has launched its Keltan KSA Self-Service platform to serve its customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as per the company's press release.

In 2018 ARLANXEO signed an agreement with Saudi Aramco to market and sell its share of Ethylene Propylene Diene rubbers (EPDM) produced in its Petro Rabigh joint-venture plant. These new EPDM grades are marketed and sold by ARLANXEO under its own Keltan trademark with the extension KSA, standing for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This innovative online platform offers customers full-control and direct interaction, at their own convenience from any location in the world. They will be able to retrieve technical information of the Keltan KSA grades as well as product safety, quality and regulatory documentation. Furthermore, Keltan KSA customers will be able to request for product samples and place orders on the web shop, which will be trackable in real-time in Self-Service.

Customer-centric and user-friendly, this platform also contains a secure complaints’ management system to communicate with our customers on their needs and strive for improvement.

"By launching Self-Service, we are creating a new way for customers to interact with our products, our services and us. We emphasize the commitment of the Keltan KSA Team to offer efficient EPDM solutions to our international customers", explained Jasvinder Kaur, Head of Keltan KSA.

As MRC informed before, in September 2017, Arlanxeo announced the expansion of applications development capability for adhesive production and testing by continually improving its methods, among other means. Current innovations in this area include endurance tests, so-called tensile tests, as well as different procedures for the production of adhesives and for the determination of the processing time. With these new application technologies, Arlanxeo can now support its customers with technical challenges in an even better, more efficient manner.

Arlanxeo was established in April 2016 as a joint venture of Lanxess - a world-leading specialty chemicals company based in Cologne, Germany - and Saudi Aramco - a major global energy and chemicals enterprise headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The two partners each hold a 50-percent interest in the joint venture. The business operations of ARLANXEO are assigned to the High Performance Elastomers and Tire & Specialty Rubbers business units.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s November refinery throughput rose from a year earlier, heading for an annual record, official data indicated on Friday, although the runs eased from highs touched in the previous two months as product inventories swelled and sales slowed, reported Reuters.

Refineries in November processed 50.46 million tonnes of crude oil, or 12.28 million barrels per day, up 2.9 percent from the same month last year, according to Reuters calculations based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The daily crude processing rates, however, came off 12.43 million bpd in October and a record of 12.49 million bpd in September, the statistics data showed.

The fall from the September-October peaks came as the government lowered prices for gasoline and diesel in November to track a steep drop in global crude prices, and to counter a sharp slowdown in local sales that started in mid-October.

"China’s state planner lowered gasoline and diesel prices three times in November. Both teapots and state refiners were under pressure to sell products to meet their annual sales target," said Han Cong, products analyst with consultancy JLC.

She added that private refiners’ utilization rates fell to 63.22 percent in the first week of December from 65.71 percent at the start of November, further indication of the pressure plants are under to scale back operations amid slowing sales.

Still, for the first 11 months, refinery output gained 7.2 percent to 554.48 million tonnes, or 12.12 million bpd, on track for an annual record.

The slowing domestic products sales have also prompted state refiners to seek additional fuel export quotas to release some of the glut.

Crude throughput is still expected to increase over last year levels in December as a new refinery starts up.

China’s private refiner Hengli Petrochemical said on Wednesday it plans test operations at its 400,000-bpd refinery in Dalian on Dec. 15, which is likely to be reflected more fully in the country’s refinery output in January.

China’s November natural gas production rose 10 percent to a record of 14.3 billion cubic meters (bcm), the data showed, to cope with heating demand that typically starts every year from around mid-November.

China ramped up both domestic output and imports to meet rising demand from households as the government switched another 3 million households to gas heating this winter.

For January-November, gas output was up 6.6 percent from a year ago at 143.8 bcm.

China is expected to consume 270 bcm of gas this year, the chairwoman of Beijing Gas, the dominant gas distributor in China’s capital, said on Thursday. That represents a rise of 12.5 percent, in line with an earlier estimate by consultancy SIA Energy.

China’s crude oil output in November fell 1.3 percent from the same month last year, and was down 1.6 percent versus a year earlier for the first 11 months, the data showed.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- KBR, Inc. announced that it has fully commissioned its first PurifierPlus™ ammonia process based greenfield plant at PT Panca Amara Utama (PAU) in Sulawesi, Indonesia, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

KBR's new PurifierPlus™ ammonia process provides plant owners with the most energy efficient, low installed cost and the most reliable ammonia technology with enhanced environmental compliance.

The total installed cost of the PurifierPlus™ technology is typical 10-15% less than other technologies and it allows for a smaller plot plan footprint, achieving a 25%-35% reduction compared to a conventional ammonia plant.

In addition to PurifierPlus™ technology, KBR is also providing its proprietary Ammonia InSite® digitalization technology, which maximizes operational performance and profitability of ammonia plants with five applications focused on production management, energy efficiency, maintenance, reliability, and environmental compliance. The online real-time system includes performance diagnostics and analytics, benchmarking, predictability of outcomes, and prevention of unplanned downtime, along with support from KBR experts.

"I am pleased to announce that the first PurifierPlus™ based greenfield project has been successfully commissioned at PAU and is currently operating at 110% of design capacity," said John Derbyshire, KBR President, Technology. "Our PurifierPlus™ technology delivers our clients the lowest total installed cost for ammonia plant projects in the industry while at the same time providing state-of the-art energy and environmental performance. The compact plant design and the InSite system provide additional cost and performance benefits making it a highly attractive technology solution for our clients."

PT Panca Amara Utama (PAU) has set up this 700,000 metric tons per annum (MTPA) capacity greenfield ammonia plant in Batui District, Banggai Regency, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. The project represents a commitment to prioritize local manufacturing to convert the country's natural resources into industrial products, and support the development of the manufacturing sector in Eastern Indonesia. PAU will be the first ammonia plant in Sulawesi and the second privately-owned plant in Indonesia.
MRC