Indian state to move planned Saudi Aramco refinery after farmers protest

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Opposition from farmers has prompted India’s western state of Maharashtra to move the location for what would be the country’s biggest oil refinery, reported Reuters with reference to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

State-run oil companies and Saudi Aramco have teamed up to build the USD44 billion refinery, which is aimed at giving India steady fuel supplies while meeting Saudi Arabia’s need to secure regular buyers for its oil.

But thousands of farmers are refusing to surrender land, fearing it could damage a region famed for its Alphonso mangoes, vast cashew plantations and fishing hamlets that boast bountiful catches of seafood.

After their protests, land acquisition has been stopped for the refinery at the proposed site at Nanar, a village in Ratnagiri district, some 400 km (250 miles) south of Mumbai, Fadnavis said on Monday.

The refinery will be built at a place where local population won’t oppose the project, he said in a press conference, without identifying a new location.

Fadnavis, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), made the announcement after forging an alliance with regional party Shiv Sena for the upcoming general election.

The location of refinery was one of the contentious issues between the parties, with Shiv Sena opposing the refinery.

The announcement comes as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is due to arrive in India on Tuesday and is expected to announce investments in energy and infrastructure during the visit.

The Ratnagiri Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd (RRPCL), which is running the project, says the 1.2 million barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery, and an integrated petrochemical site with a capacity of 18 million tonnes per year, will help create direct and indirect employment for up to 150,000 people, with jobs that pay better than agriculture or fishing.

RRPCL, a joint venture between Indian Oil Corp (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum, has said suggestions the refinery would damage the environment were baseless.

"The company is hopeful that the state government will provide sufficient land for the project on the western coast," Anil Nagwekar, a spokesman for the RRPCL, told Reuters.

Land acquisition has always been a contentious issue in rural India, where a majority of the population depends on farming for its livelihood.

In 2008, for example, India’s Tata Motors had to shelve plans for a car factory in an eastern state after facing widespread protests from farmers.

As MRC informed previously, Indian Oil Corp, the country’s top refiner, shut half of its 300,000 barrels per day Panipat refinery in northern Haryana state for about a month from mid-February for maintenance.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman cemented a USD10 billion (7.7 billion pounds) deal for a refining and petrochemical complex in China on Friday, meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping who urged joint efforts to counter extremism and terror, reported Reuters.

The Saudi delegation, including top executives from state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, arrived on Thursday on an Asia tour that has already seen the kingdom pledge investment of USD20 billion in Pakistan and seek to make additional investments in India’s refining industry.

Saudi Arabia signed 35 economic cooperation agreements with China worth a total of USD28 billion at a joint investment forum during the visit, Saudi state news agency SPA said.

"China is a good friend and partner to Saudi Arabia," President Xi Jinping told the crown prince in front of reporters.

"The special nature of our bilateral relationship reflects the efforts you have made," added Xi, who has made stepping up China’s presence in the Middle East a key foreign policy objective, despite its traditional low-key role there.

The crown prince said Saudi Arabia’s relations with China dated back "a very long time in the past".

"In the hundreds, even thousands, of years, the interactions between the sides have been friendly. Over such a long period of exchanges with China, we have never experienced any problems with China," he said.

Crown Prince Mohammed, who has come under fire in the West following the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate in October, said Saudi Arabia saw great opportunities with China.

"The Silk Road initiative and China’s strategic orientation are very much in line with the kingdom’s Vision 2030," he said according to SPA, referring to Saudi Arabia’s sweeping economic reform programme.

Trade between the countries increased by 32 percent last year, he said. Saudi Arabia also said it was working to add Chinese to the curriculum in Saudi schools and universities.

"The introduction of Chinese to the curriculum is an important step towards the opening of new horizons for students," the government said in a statement.

China has had to step carefully in relations with Riyadh, since Beijing also has close ties with Saudi Arabia’s regional foe, Iran.

China is also wary of criticism from Muslim countries about its camps in the heavily Muslim far western region of Xinjiang, which the government says are for de-radicalization purposes and rights groups call internment camps.

Xi told the crown prince the two countries must strengthen international cooperation on de-radicalization to “prevent the infiltration and spread of extremist thinking”, Chinese state television said.

Saudi Arabia respected and supported China’s right to protect its own security and take counter-terror and de-radicalization steps, the crown prince told Xi, according to the same report, and was willing to increase cooperation.

Meeting the crown prince earlier on Friday, Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng said the two countries should enhance exchanges on their experiences in de-radicalization, China’s official Xinhua news agency said in a separate report.

Chinese state media made no direct mention of Xinjiang in their stories on the crown prince’s meetings.

Aramco agreed to form a joint venture with Chinese defense conglomerate Norinco to develop a refining and petrochemical complex in the northeastern Chinese city of Panjin, saying the project was worth more than USD10 billion.

The partners would form a company called Huajin Aramco Petrochemical Co as part of a project that would include a 300,000-barrels per day (bpd) refinery with a 1.5-million-metric tonnes per year ethylene cracker, Aramco said.

Aramco will supply up to 70 percent of the crude feedstock for the complex, which is expected to start operations in 2024.

The investments could help Saudi Arabia regain its place as the top oil exporter to China, a position Russia has held for the last three years. Saudi Aramco is set to boost market share by signing supply deals with non-state Chinese refiners.

Aramco also signed an agreement to buy a 9 percent stake in Zhejiang Petrochemical, Saudi state news agency SPA said. This formalized a previously announced plan to gain a stake in a 400,000-bpd refinery and petrochemicals complex in Zhoushan, south of Shanghai.

China sees "enormous potential" in Saudi Arabia’s economy and wants more high-tech cooperation, State Councillor Wang Yi, the Chinese government’s top diplomat, said on Thursday.

But China was not seeking to play politics in the Middle East, the widely read state-run tabloid, the Global Times, said in an editorial.

"China won’t be a geopolitical player in the Middle East. It has no enemies and can cooperate with all countries in the region," said the paper, published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily.

"China’s increasing influence in the Middle East comes from pure friendly cooperation. Such a partnership will be welcomed by more countries in the Middle East."

As MRC wrote before, 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.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Evonik is driving forward its commitment in the attractive 3D printing market, as per the company's press release.

The specialty chemicals company has developed a new polymer powder for applications in higher temperature range as part of its polyamide 6 series. The product further expands Evonik’s portfolio of high-performance materials for powder-based 3D printing technologies.

Evonik’s new polyamide powder features high mechanical strength as well as excellent chemical and temperature resistance. Its heat deflection temperature (HDT B) is around 195 C. Moreover, the powder material stands out for its low water absorption - below 3 percent -, which has a positive effect on processability in 3D printing and the dimensional stability of printed 3D components.

"New, ready-to-use materials that are optimally adapted to the individual printer and expand the range of application to higher temperatures move the 3D printing industry one step further toward series production," says Mark Zhao, founder and CEO of TPM 3D Chinese technology company for Selective Laser Sintering (SLS). "We are seeing strong demand for 3D solutions in the higher temperature range - for example in the automotive and electronics industries. That’s why we were pleased to launch the new temperature-stable material together with Evonik."

The new polymer powder in Evonik's polyamide 6 series with its nearly round grain shape stands out for excellent flowability and application properties, making it suitable for all powder-based 3D printing technologies. A proprietary procedure of Evonik is employed to produce the high-temperature material at the company’s Marl site.

The 3D printing market is booming, posting double-digit growth rates. Evonik is a world leader in the production of polyamide 12 powders (PA 12), which have been used in additive manufacturing technologies for over 20 years. In addition to PEEK filament and PA 12 powders, the company's product portfolio includes flexible PEBA powders as well as a full range of additives such as dispersion agents, flow improvers or reactive modifiers.

As MRC informed previously, Evonik Resource Efficiency invested in a capacity expansion of its performance foams business at its production site in Darmstadt, Germany. The investment increased the output of the facility by about 20% as a first step. The Group will be adding production equipment to its operations complex that manufactures products marketed under the Rohacell brand. The expanded production capacity was expected to be operational by the second half of 2017.

Evonik, the creative industrial group from Germany, is one of the world leaders in specialty chemicals. Its activities focus on the key megatrends health, nutrition, resource efficiency and globalization. Evonik benefits specifically from its innovative prowess and integrated technology platforms. Evonik is active in over 100 countries around the world.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- PinnacleART, a global leader in designing, implementing, and maintaining asset reliability and integrity programs, announced its partnership with Solomon Associates, a performance improvement company that provides benchmarking and advisory services, to build comprehensive asset assessments for facilities in the energy industry, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The partnership will allow both companies to offer best-in-class reliability, maintenance, and integrity assessments to the oil and gas, chemical, and manufacturing industries.

"Our partnership with Solomon Associates will allow us to provide a more comprehensive assessment and overall offering to our clients,” said Nathanael Ince, Vice President of Client Solutions. “PinnacleART’s expertise in asset performance management (APM) solutions, paired with Solomon Associates’ industry-leading benchmarking data and expertise, will enable us to partner with our clients to get to best-in-class reliability and integrity more effectively and efficiently than ever before."

Practically, the partner-based assessment takes several weeks to complete, utilizes the benchmarking data from the International Study of Plant Reliability and Maintenance Effectiveness (RAM Study), includes 20 practice areas of qualitative measurement, and is coupled with an improvement plan with modeled financial returns in both increased production and optimized spend.

"We look forward to partnering with PinnacleART and delivering significant value to new and existing customers,” said Charles Reith, President & CEO of Solomon Associates. “The partnership will enable us to deliver data-driven insights and expert recommendations combined with the actions needed to deliver true and measurable value. The combination is exactly what our customers have been asking for."
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MOSCOW (MRC) - Saudi Aramco’s trading arm plans to open an office in London soon as it expands its international business, sources familiar with the move saiв Reuters.

Aramco Trading Co (ATC) also opened an office in the bunkering hub of Fujairah, United Arab Emirates in December to trade oil products and hired two traders from Trafigura and PetroChina to run operations there, the sources said.

“Last June, a trading office was inaugurated in Singapore, and last December (another) in Fujairah and very soon in London, just like any trading house,” one of the sources said. Another source said: “They have moved a few trading desks to Singapore and Fujairah. London is surely next."

A third source said the London office might be inaugurated as early as next week during International Petroleum (IP) Week, an industry event held annually in the British capital. Saudi Aramco, the parent company, already has an office in Marylebone, London. The ATC London operations may be located in the same place as the parent company and are likely to start with a handful of crude oil traders, one of the sources said. ATC did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

The trading sector faces increased rivalry between national oil companies (NOCs), international oil firms and Swiss merchants. NOCs have cheap feedstock and strength in refining, allowing them to compete aggressively with oil majors and especially traders that lack their own production.

ATC aims to boost its trading volumes in crude and refined products to 6 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2020 and the company’s headquarters will remain in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, ATC’s chief executive told Reuters last year.

The CEO, Ibrahim al-Buainain, also said the plan to open an ATC regional office in Europe - either London or Geneva - was set for the first quarter of 2019. Middle East oil producers are venturing into buying and selling oil to boost their incomes as a sharp drop in crude prices since mid-2014 has forced the industry to become more efficient and commercially focused.

State-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co is establishing a new trading operation along with Italy’s Eni and Austria’s OMV. ATC was set up in 2012 initially to market refined products, base oils and bulk petrochemicals, but has since expanded into crude trading mainly to feed international Aramco joint ventures such as the U.S. Motiva refinery and S-Oil in South Korea.

Aramco, the world’s top oil producer and exporter, aims to become the largest integrated energy firm, with plans to expand refining operations and petrochemical output. It pumps around 10 million bpd of crude, of which it exports about 7 million bpd.

The company plans to raise its refining capacity - inside Saudi Arabia and abroad - to 8-10 million bpd, from around 5.4 million bpd now. Aramco is expanding its refining business at home as well as in new markets particularly in Asia.
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