Trinseo raises January PC prices in Europe

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinseo, a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex binders and synthetic rubber, and its affiliate companies in Europe have announced price increases for all polycarbonate (PC) grades in Europe, as per the company's press release.

Effective January 7, 2019, or as existing contract terms allow, the contract and spot prices for the products listed below rose as follows:

- CALIBRE PC resins - by EUR300 per metric ton.

As MRC informed before, Trinseo last raised its prices for PC grades on 1 July 2018, as stated below:

- CALIBRE PC resins - by EUR100 per metric ton.

And previously, the company increased its PC prices in Europe on 1 May, 2018. Then, the rise was EUR70 per metric ton.

Trinseo is a global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex and rubber. Trinseo's technology is used by customers in industries such as home appliances, automotive, building & construction, carpet, consumer electronics, consumer goods, electrical & lighting, medical, packaging, paper & paperboard, rubber goods and tires. Formerly known as Styron, Trinseo completed its renaming process in 1Q 2015. Trinseo had approximately USD4.4 billion in net sales in 2017, with 16 manufacturing sites around the world, and approximately 2,200 employees.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - India’s biggest refiner Indian Oil Corp Ltd said on Wednesday that Iran may still invest in a refinery expansion project at one of its subsidiaries, said Reuters.

Indian Oil’s chairman Sanjiv Singh said that Iran has not ruled out participating in the expansion at Chennai Petroleum Corp Ltd, a south India-based 20,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery. Iran’s participation has been questioned after India cut back its Iranian crude oil imports following U.S. sanctions.

However, Singh’s comments come a few days after India exempted rupee payments to the National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) for crude oil imports from a withholding tax.

The exemption will allow Indian refiners to settle about USD1.5 billion of outstanding payments to NIOC through direct rupee payments.

It has been expected that these payments could help Iran invest in Indian projects, particularly the Chennai Petroleum Corp expansion.

"Iran has always been positive with this (the new rules). I think they should be able to invest," Singh told Reuters, following a media conference on Wednesday.

Chennai Petroleum plans to invest up to 356.98 billion rupees (USD5.1 billion) to replace the 20,000 bpd Nagapattinam refinery in Southern Tamil Nadu state with a 180,000 bpd plant.

Naftiran Intertrade, the Swiss subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Company, holds a 15.4 per cent stake in Chennai Petroleum, while Indian Oil has about a 52 percent share.

Singh said a detailed feasibility report for the expansion has yet to be prepared.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Welsh government environment agency, Natural Resources Wales (NRW), has issued an enforcement notice to suspend two fuel pipelines on the Valero refinery jetty in Milford Haven, reported Reuters with reference to the agency.

"The notice was issued after pollution incidents affected water, land and wildlife along the coast in December and the first week of January," NRW said.

The US company last week reported a petroleum product leak into the Milford Haven Waterway.

Valero operates the 220,000 barrel per day Pembroke oil refinery.

As MRC wrote earlier, in late February 2018, CB&I announced that its CDAlky technology had been selected by Valero Refining - New Orleans LLC for its St. Charles Alkylation Project located in Norco, Louisiana. CB&I's overall scope of supply on the project includes CDAlky technology license, basic engineering and proprietary equipment. When it becomes operational in 2020, the new CDAlky unit will produce 25,000 BPD alkylate from FCC-derived olefin feedstocks.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Tianjin Wison China Holding Company and Tianjin Development Zone Administrative Committee officially entered into an "Investment and Cooperation Agreement on Light Hydrocarbons Comprehensive Utilization Project" at the Investment Service Center of Tianjin Development Zone, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Phase 1 of the project has investment at around 15 billion yuan and an area of about 1.7 million square meters, mainly including 1 Mtpa light hydrocarbons cracking unit, downstream units for high-density polyethylene (HDPE), linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), acrylonitrile, and butadiene, as well as supporting utilities and auxiliary production facilities.

By leveraging its proprietary and internationally advanced process technology, cheap and abundant light hydrocarbon (LPG) is used as the feedstock to produce basic chemical raw materials such as ethylene and propylene, and high-end chemicals such as polyethylene and acrylonitrile to meet the growing domestic and international high-end market demands. In addition, a truly smart demonstration plant will be built with Wison’s comprehensive advantage in digital design and chemical big data.

Wison is a diversified group mainly providing energy and chemical services, which range from the storage and utilization of primary energy such as coal, oil and natural gas, onshore energy engineering services, marine engineering equipment fabrication to the development of downstream new chemical materials. Wison (China) Holding Company is a subsidiary of Wison Group for the new chemical materials business that globally acquires light hydrocarbon raw materials, builds and operates olefin and its downstream production units, and works on the R&D of high-end new chemical materials. The company is dedicated to building high value-added light hydrocarbon and new materials industrial parks.

Tianjin Nangang Industrial Zone, where the project is signed, is a petrochemical industrial base in Tianjin. It has a favorable port and location, convenient logistics and transportation infrastructure, and mature utilities, which serves as a solid base for realization and future development of the project.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - China issued its first batch of crude oil import quotas for 2019 at a lower volume than for the same batch a year ago though expectations are for the volumes to climb later this year, as per Reuters.

The Ministry of Commerce granted quotas totaling 89.84 million tonnes to 58 companies in its first allowances for 2019, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the matter and documents reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday.

This is down from the 121.32 million tonnes issued in the first batch of allowances for 2018, although the sources said Beijing may increase the overall volume for 2019 in the second batch of quotas later this year. Lower import quotas may signal to slow crude demand growth for the first half of 2019 in China, the world’s largest oil importer and second-largest oil consumer.

“The market, in general, does not have an upbeat outlook for imports. I think the drop in quota could likely mean easing growth in China’s crude imports in the first half,” said Zhou Guoxia, a crude oil analyst with consultancy JLC. Private refiners, also known as teapots, received quotas for 70.65 million tonnes of imports, more than 20 percent lower than the first batch of quotas issued last year, according to the documents and Reuters data.

This followed lower consumption of the 2018 quotas, said Seng Yick Tee, analyst at Beijing-based consultancy SIA Energy. Refiners only used 71 percent of the quotas allocated between January and October 2018, the period that the government used to determine quotas for the first batch of 2019, said Tee.

One of the four sources with knowledge of the quotas, who works for a private Chinese refiner, said they received about a third of its annual quota in the first batch and expects to get the remainder in a second batch, which Beijing usually issues around September.

Overall though, the start-up of new refineries in China in 2019 is expected to raise crude imports to a record, adding 630,000 barrels per day of new demand, 7 percent higher than last year, according to SIA Energy. "We don’t see any major impact on China’s overall crude imports in 2019 as the import growth is mostly contributed by mega petrochemical refiners and national oil companies’ refineries," SIA Energy’s Tee said.

Dalian Hengli Petrochemical and Zhejiang Petrochemical, which are starting up new refineries in 2019, have each received quotas of 4 million tonnes, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters.Dragon Aromatics, a petrochemical producer based in Fujian province, has also received import quota of 600,000 tonnes as it resumes operations at its condensate splitter, the sources said.
MRC