Saudi Aramco hires SMBC, Riyad Bank for Amiral project financing

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Aramco has hired Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp (SMBC) and Riyad Bank to advise it on financing Amiral, a petrochemical project it plans to develop with France’s Total, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with the matter.

The Saudi state-owned oil producer approached banks for the financing of the project, which is expected to be around USD5 billion, late last year, sources told Reuters at the time.

Total declined to comment. Aramco, Riyad Bank and SMBC did not respond to requests for immediate comment.

Aramco, the world’s largest crude producer, plans to boost investment in refining and petrochemicals in a bid to cut reliance on crude as demand for oil slows.

Plans for the giant Amiral petrochemical complex in the Saudi city of Jubail were announced in April 2018.

The project - scheduled to start up in 2024 - will be located next to the Satorp refinery, which is also jointly owned and operated by Aramco and Total.

The companies said last year the facility would comprise a mixed-feed cracker with a capacity to produce 1.5 million tonnes a year of ethylene. It will also have other units producing high-value petrochemicals.

As MRC informed earlier, in October 2018, Saudi Aramco signed an agreement to invest in a refinery-petrochemical project in eastern China, part of its strategy to expand in downstream operations globally. The memorandum of understanding between the company and Zhejiang province included plans to invest in a new refinery and co-operate in crude oil supply, storage and trading, according to details released by the Zhoushan government after a signing ceremony in the city south of Shanghai.

Saudi Aramco, officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, is a Saudi Arabian national oil and natural gas company based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco"s value has been estimated at up to USD10 trillion in the Financial Times, making it the world"s most valuable company. Saudi Aramco has both the largest proven crude oil reserves, at more than 260 billion barrels, and largest daily oil production.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - Citgo Petroleum Corp idled the small gasoline-producing unit at its 157,500-barrel-per-day (bpd) Corpus Christi, Texas, refinery this week for economic reasons, sources familiar with plant operations said Reuters.

The 13,000-bpd FCCU 1 was shut on Monday for “non-operational reasons” the company said in a notice filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The sources said FCCU 1 was not profitable for the refinery to operate.

Citgo is majority owned by the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, whose refining network operated at reduced rates last year amid lack of spare parts, underinvestment and insufficient flow of light crude to mix with Venezuela’s heavy and extra heavy grades.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF has inaugurated a new, world-scale antioxidants manufacturing plant at its Caojing site in Shanghai, China, as per the company's press release.

With an annual capacity of 42,000 tons, the plant will produce antioxidants and associated forms and blends for the plastic additives market. The units for powder blending, liquid antioxidants and formgiving are now operational as part of the plant’s first phase.

"With this investment, we strengthen our position as the leading global supplier of antioxidants," said Dr. Markus Kamieth, Member of the Board of Directors, BASF SE. "Asia is the world’s largest antioxidants market and China accounts for almost 65% of the market in Asia. We expect the market will show attractive growth rates in the medium to long term."

"BASF wants to be the leading chemicals supplier for our customers," said Dr. Stephan Kothrade, President, Functions Asia Pacific, President and Chairman Greater China, BASF. "By investing in advanced production plants in China, we want to anticipate and fulfill our customers’ needs even better. We will combine our unique expertise in the chemical industry with our customers’ competencies, and jointly develop solutions that are both profitable and responsible."

Located at BASF’s Caojing site in the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park, the new plant will benefit from its proximity to BASF’s regional research and development center in Shanghai; a hub that provides technical support to polymer producers across the region.

BASF runs a global production network and is the only supplier of plastic additives with production sites in Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East.

As MRC wrote previously, within the next five years, BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany) plans to invest globally more than EUR200 million in its plastic additives business, approximately half of which in Asia, focusing on capacity expansions and operational excellence, said the producer on its site in November 2016. Plastic additives improve product properties such as scratch resistance or light stability, and optimize plastics manufacturing processes. As the leading global supplier of plastic additives with manufacturing assets in all regions, BASF is a major partner to the plastics industry.

BASF is the largest diversified chemical company in the world and is headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany. BASF produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - Indian Oil Corp, the country’s top refiner, will shut half of its 300,000 barrels per day Panipat refinery in northern Haryana state for about a month from mid-February for maintenance, said Reuters.

The refiner will shut a 150,000 bpd crude unit. It will also shut a sulfur recovery unit, hydrocracker, diesel hydrotreater, and coker among others for planned maintenance.

During the shutdown IOC will mobilize naphtha from other plants for the 800,000 tonnes per annum cracker associated with the plant, a company source said.

From mid-March, IOC will shut one of eight heaters attached to its Panipat naphtha cracker for 45 days, the spokesman said.

The company source said the shutdown of one the heaters would curtail the refiner’s naphtha production to 350 tonnes per hour from an average of about 400 tonnes per hour.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroChina DaQing Refining & Chemical has shut its polypropylene (PP) unit for an unplanned maintenance work, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the company has halted operations at the unit on January 22, 2019. The unit is likely to resume production in end-January, 2019.

Located in Daqing, China, the plant PP unit with production capacity of 300,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, PetroChina has nearly doubled the amount of Russian crude being processed at its refinery in Dalian, the company’s biggest, since January 2018, as a new supply agreement has 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. Dalian has the capacity to process about 410,000 bpd of crude. The increase follows an agreement worked out between the Russian and Chinese governments under which Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft will supply 30 million tonnes of ESPO Blend crude to PetroChina in 2018, or about 600,000 bpd. That would represent an increase of 50 percent over 2017 volumes. The additional oil sent to Dalian is about 120,000 bpd and will make up the bulk of the Russian increases.

PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
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