Marathon, Galveston Bay workers to resume contract talks

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Union workers at Marathon Petroleum Corp’s Galveston Bay Refinery are preparing to resume negotiations with the company after rejecting the last contract offer, a United Steelworkers (USW) official said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The Galveston Bay Refinery, located in Texas City, Texas, was the site of a bitter strike in 2015, which began over a breakdown in national contract talks but lasted almost five months because of disagreements on local terms.

On Monday, Marathon spokesman Sid Barth said: "Negotiations continue, operations continue."

No date has been set for the talks, said David Jankowski, vice president of USW Local 13-1, which represents workers at the refinery.

“We’re waiting on the company for dates and times,” Jankowski said.

The Galveston Bay workers rejected Marathon’s contract offer in voting last week.

One reason for the overwhelming vote against Marathon’s offer was a proposed change in leadership on the production units to salaried staff from hourly chief operators, Jankowski said.

Marathon is also seeking changes in time off and sick leave.

Negotiators for the USW International union reached agreement on Jan. 31 with Shell Oil Co, representing oil companies, on wages increases and benefits for 30,000 refinery, chemical plant, pipeline and terminal workers represented by the union, including the hourly employees at the Galveston Bay Refinery.

That agreement, which provides an 11 percent pay raise over its three-year length, will be paired with the agreement on local issues at Galveston Bay to make the contract for workers at the refinery.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Avery Dennison Corporation is pleased to announce the appointment of Sam O’Keefe as vice president of research and development (R&D) for its Label and Graphic Materials group in Europe (LGM-EU), effective 7 February, 2019, as per the company's press release.

She will be based at Oegstgeest, reporting to Pascale Wautelet, vice president of global R&D. She will become part of the European leadership team of LGM and have a dotted reporting line to Jeroen Diderich, vice president and general manager of LGM-EU.

"In this role," said Pascale Wautelet, "Sam will provide vision and direction to the R&D organization in the EMEA region and lead new-product development, material re-engineering and adhesive development for Avery Dennison’s LGM business across Europe."

This appointment reinforces Avery Dennison’s continued focus on innovation and sustainability, which includes ongoing investments and external partnerships with suppliers, universities, other business partners and new ventures.

Sam brings more than 25 years of industrial experience and materials science with major international companies. She joins Avery Dennison from Sensient Technologies, where she worked as technical director - Industrial Colors. Prior to Sensient, she held technical and leadership roles with several companies, including Unilever, InterfaceFlor, Ashland and Saint-Gobain.

As MRC wrote before, the recent launch, by Avery Dennison, of a portfolio using recycled PET (rPET) liners has received another important boost, with four labelling constructions now available across Europe. Three CleanFlake materials are now available on a thin rPET23 liner. The 'switchable' CleanFlake adhesive is designed to separate cleanly from PET bottles during the recycling process so that contamination of PET flakes is avoided - an important factor in ensuring that recycled PET can be recycled rather than downcycled. A fourth material - a high clarity ClearCut PP50 TOP CLEAR-S7000-rPET23 construction - is considerably thinner than today’s market reference (PP60 with PET30), and offers high speed conversion and dispensing using the same thin rPET23 liner.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Exxon Mobil Corp shut the second-largest crude distillation unit (CDU) at its 502,500-barrel-per-day (bpd) Baton Rouge, Louisiana, refinery for a planned overhaul, said sources familiar with plant operations, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The overhaul of the 110,000-bpd PSLA 9 CDU is scheduled to last two months. The work was expected to begin this month.

“The Baton Rouge Refinery has shut down some of its units and associated operations for planned maintenance beginning Feb 11,” said Exxon spokeswoman Megan Manchester.

The sources said the 22,500 bpd coker was also shut on Monday for a planned overhaul.

Manchester did not identify the units shut at the Baton Rouge refinery.

CDUs do the primary refining of crude oil into feedstocks for all other production units, as well as producing unfinished motor fuels.

Cokers refine residual crude oil received from distillation units into motor fuel feedstocks.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical has undertaken a planed shutdown its No. 2 low density polyethylene (LDPE) unit in Shanghai, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the company has halted operations at the unit on February 10, 2019. The unit is likely to remain under maintenance until end-March 2019.

Located at Shanghai in China, the No. 2 unit has a production capacity of 45,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed before, Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical conducted a turnaround at its another LDPE unit in Shanghai from February 26 to March 26, 2018. Located at Shanghai in China, the LDPE unit has a production capacity of 100,000 mt/year.

China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec Limited is a Chinese oil and gas company based in Beijing, China. It is listed in Hong Kong and also trades in Shanghai and New York . Sinopec is the worlds fifth biggest company by revenue.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Stavrolen, Russia' major polyolefins producer, shut down its polypropylene (PP) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) production because of technical issues, according to ICIS-MRC Price report with reference to the plant's customers.

The company's clients said Stavrolen planned to take off-stream its PP production from 11 February due to technical problems. According to preliminary data, the outage will last for about a week.

Stavrolen's (part of Lukoil) annual capacity of LDPE and HDPE production is 120,000 and 300,000 tonnes, respectively. The plant's output of polymers of propylene and HDPE exceeded 111,800 tonnes and 293,600 tonnes last year, up by 11% and 26%, respectively, year on year.
MRC