Lithuania LNG port aims to be Baltic hub, double flows

MOSCOW (MRC) - Lithuania's Klaipeda liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal will more than double its LNG volumes once gas pipelines to Poland and Finland open after 2021, turning the Baltic port into a regional supply hub, its operator said in an interview, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The import facility, named "Independence", was built in Klaipeda port in 2014 to break the monopoly of Russia's Gazprom over gas supplies to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Baltic countries formerly ruled from Moscow.

It has chiefly imported Norwegian LNG for mostly domestic consumption, using between a fifth and a third of its annual capacity of 2.7 million tonnes of LNG, but began to diversify in late 2017 with the import of its first U.S. cargo.

"We certainly see an interest from international trading houses to use this infrastructure - the terminal and the upcoming pipelines - to access gas markets in central and eastern Europe," Klaipedos Nafta CEO Mindaugas Jusius told Reuters on Friday.

"We keep getting queries whether we have capacities available for this. The nearest LNG terminal to ours, in Poland, is fully booked until 2035", he said, adding: "Our ambition is to achieve terminal utilization of 40 to 50 percent."

Poland's Swinoujscie LNG terminal, 295 miles (475 km) west along the Baltic coast, is due to expand capacity to 5.4 million tonnes per annum by 2021 hoping to capitalise on higher gas demand in central Europe and lessen the region's dependence on Russian gas.

Between the two ports lies the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad which just this month opened its own LNG import terminal for domestic needs. The GIPL pipeline to Poland is due to open in 2021, and with it the prospect that Lithuania supplies Ukraine, said Jusius.

This would bolster Ukraine's diversification of its own supplies from Russia, disputes with whom have led to major supply disruptions to the rest of Europe. Klaipedos Nafta is also participating in the development of four LNG import terminals in Europe and central and southern America, with a view to becoming a shareholder and long-term operator, Jusius said.

One of the projects could reach final investment decision (FID) this year and another by 2020, said Jusius, declining to name the projects citing confidentiality agreements. "Our ambition is to grow into the largest operator of LNG import terminals worldwide," said Jusius.

Lithuania decided last year to continue LNG imports until at least 2044. Jusius said Klaipedos Nafta will decide by late 2022 whether to buy a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) import terminal from Norway's Hoegh LNG.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- SABIC has announced that it has taken a majority stake in Black Diamond Structures (BDS), a nanotechnology company established in 2014, as per the company's press release.

BDS produces and commercializes MOLECULAR REBAR, a proprietary technology of modified carbon nanotubes that offers great potential for enhancing the performance of energy storage applications using lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries.

BDS is being added as part of SABIC’s Specialties business. According to Alan Leung, Vice President of Specialties, the carbon nanotube technology of BDS will allow Specialties to address several demanding challenges in the energy storage market. In particular, BDS provides game-changing benefits to battery manufacturers looking for breakthrough improvements in charge rates, battery cycle life and energy density.

Conventional carbon nanotubes are known for their tendency to get entangled, cake and hold high residual impurities, limiting their capabilities of enhancing electrical and mechanical material properties in real world applications. In contrast, the MOLECULAR REBAR product supplied by BDS delivers clean and discrete carbon nanotubes of uniform aspect ratio, enabling their use to create high-performance energy storage applications.

BDS Chief Executive Officer, John Hacskaylo, says that this proprietary nanomaterial can be directly incorporated in existing production processes of batteries without requiring additional investments, allowing a fast-track for manufacturers to improve their next generation of batteries. Tests have shown that MOLECULAR REBAR type carbon nanotubes significantly improve the cycle life of a lead-acid battery and enhance the performance of lithium-ion batteries to meet the increased power capacity demands of the industry.

Moreover, Hacskaylo expects MOLECULAR REBAR to play an effective role in the downgauging and downsizing of new battery designs. This not only meets the growing global demand for lighter batteries in the hybrid and electric vehicles market, but also reduces battery production costs, helping manufacturers to increase output and achieve higher economies of scale.

Leung envisions that adding the MOLECULAR REBAR technology to the portfolio of SABIC’s Specialties business can also open new opportunities beyond the energy storage market and unleash innovations in material science for enhancing the properties of specialty resins and functional compounds.

As MRC wrote previously, in October 2016, the first product of a new generation of low density polyethylene (LDPE) foam grades from Sabic was designed to increase production efficiency at the foam manufacturer.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) ranks among the world's top petrochemical companies. The company is among the worldпїЅs market leaders in the production of polyethylene, polypropylene and other advanced thermoplastics, glycols, methanol and fertilizers.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Japanese refiners have loaded Iranian oil onto a tanker, resuming imports after halting purchases because of sanctions by the United States, a spokesman for a Japanese refinery and an Iranian official said Reuters.

Japan is the last of the four biggest Iranian oil buyers in Asia to resume imports after receiving a waiver from U.S. sanctions on crude imports that started in November. China and India maintained their imports after November while South Korea halted imports for four months, resuming them over the weekend.

Iran is the fourth-largest oil producer among the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. "After China, South Korea, India and Turkey, Japan also started the process of importing Iranian oil," Abdolnaser Hemmati, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, said according to the state news agency IRNA.

Japanese refiner Fuji Oil Co lifted a cargo of Iranian crude oil over the weekend, a company spokesman said. The very large crude carrier (VLCC) Kisogawa loaded about 2 million barrels of Iranian oil on Sunday and is expected to reach Japan on Feb. 9, according to the Fuji spokesman and Refinitiv Eikon data. Fuji Oil owns about half of the oil onboard, while Showa Shell Sekiyu KK owns the remainder, the Fuji spokesman said.

"It took a while for us to resume imports of Iranian oil," he said, adding that the biggest hurdle was to get banks to agree to handle payments to Iran. A Showa Shell spokesman declined to comment on specific deals, adding that it has an option to resume Iran oil imports if all conditions are met.

Still, the Iranian exports to Japan, the world's fourth-biggest oil import, may be short-lived as two buyers based in Japan said they may not be able to continue after annual tanker insurance backed by the Japanese government expires in March.

"We have already bought oil in case we can't take Iranian cargoes for March loading," one of the buyers said. Iran's oil exports have fallen sharply since U.S. President Donald Trump said in May 2018 the United States would withdraw from a pact curtailing Iran's disputed nuclear programme and reimpose sanctions on Tehran.

Japan stopped oil imports from Iran in November when the sanctions came into effect. Iranian oil accounted for 5.3 percent of Japan's total crude imports in 2017.

However, waivers were granted to Iran's biggest oil clients - Japan, China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Greece and Turkey - which allow them to import some oil for another 180 days. On Saturday, South Korea received its first Iranian oil cargo in four months.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hanwha Total Petrochemical is in plans to shut its Deasan cracker for maintenance and debottlenecking exercise, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in South Korea informed that the company is expected to start maintenance along with the capacity expansion at the cracker in end-March, 2019. The cracker is expected to complete turnaround and expansion process in 40-45 days.

Following the expansion, the ethylene capacity will be increased by 310,000 MT and propylene capacity will be increased by 120,000 MT.

Located at Daesan in South Korea, currently the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 1.09 million mt/year and propylene capacity of 640,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, Hanwha Total Petrochemical is investing approximately USD500m to further expand its Daesan integrated refining and petrochemical complex in South Korea. The company operates as a 50/50 joint venture (JV) between Total and Hanwha. The planned investment is expected to increase annual polypropylene capacity by almost 60% to 1.1 million tonnes and ethylene capacity by 10% to 1.5 million tonnes by the end of 2020.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Karpatneftekhim (Kalush, Ivano-Frankivsk region), Ukraine's largest petrochemical plant,
stopped the production of high density polyethylene (HDPE) due to a fire on the olefin complex. The polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production continues, according to ICIS-MRC Price Report.

The company's customers said the Ukrainian producer, after a fire in the ethylene production pipeline, was forced to almost immediately suspend the production of HDPE. While the production of PVC continues, but with reduced capacity utilisation. The exact dates of the outage have not been announced yet.

Further operation mode of Karpatneftekhim will be determined not earlier than next week, when the audit of the effects of the fire on the equipment will be completed. As previously reported, a fire broke out on the evening of 12 January.

Pyrogaz was burning in the open area of the plant; a 15-meter column of flame was visible above the plant. Fire at the Karpatneftekhim plant was localized on 12 Januarfy at 23.48.

Karpatneftekhim is one of the largest enterprises of Ukraine's petrochemical complex. Currently, the plant can produce annually 300,000 tonnes of PVC, 200,000 tonnes of caustic soda, about 180,000 tonnes of chlorine, as well as 250,000 tonnes of ethylene and 100,000 tonnes of polyethylene.
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