Workers at refinery give Shell one week to avert strikes

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Workers at a 400,000 barrel per day refinery will go on strike if Shell does not meet their demands for a pay raise before Thursday night, Dutch labor union FNV, asper Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Workers at Royal Dutch Shell’s Pernis refinery in the Netherlands will determine the shape and timing of possible actions at the beginning of next week, FNV spokesman Egbert Vellenberg said.

As it was written earlier, in the Netherlands, a consortium of world-leading companies comprising Air Liquide, Nouryon (formerly AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals), Enerkem and the Port of Rotterdam – has announced that Shell will join as a partner in Europe’s first advanced waste-to-chemicals facility in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Shell, Air Liquide, Nouryon, Enerkem– well, perhaps SANE is the right acronym, and there’s something right in that. Shell will become an equal equity partner in the proposed commercial-scale waste-to-chemicals project, which will be the first of its kind in Europe to make valuable chemicals and biofuels out of non-recyclable waste materials.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Mexican government will invite four companies to bid in a restricted tender to build the new Dos Bocas refinery for state oil company Pemex, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to Energy Minister Rocio Nahle.

Dos Bocas would be Pemex’s seventh domestic refinery and is intended to help wean Mexico off growing fuel imports, a major campaign promise of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who took office in December.

Firms, including US-based Bechtel and KBR, Italy’s Eni Saipem, Japan’s Chiyoda Corporation, and Mexico’s ICA Fluor , were mentioned as “proposed companies for the restricted tender” in a Pemex presentation about the refinery from late last year seen by Reuters.

The energy minister added that the names of the companies selected by the government would be made public later on Monday during an event to mark the anniversary of the 1938 nationalization of the country’s oil industry and the birth of Pemex.

Nahle said that the refinery, slated to be built in the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco, has already been granted all required government permits, including for construction.

Lopez Obrador, who favors a more state-centric energy model, has been a sharp critic of the previous government’s constitutional reform that ended Pemex’s decades-long monopoly and allowed private and foreign oil companies to operate exploration and production projects on their own.

The 2019 budget for Petroleos Mexicanos, as Pemex is formally known, calls for spending almost USD2.5 billion on the Dos Bocas refinery, which aims to be able to process 340,000 barrels per day of heavy crude.

That processing capacity would make the new refinery Pemex’s biggest.

Government officials estimate the total cost of the refinery at between USD6 billion and USD8 billion.

As MRC wrote before, in June 2018, Petroleos Mexicanos disclosed the results of the bidding process for the rehabilitation and commissioning works to be carried out on the H-Oil Plant located in the Miguel Hidalgo refinery in Tula, in the state of Hidalgo.

Pemex, Mexican Petroleum, is a Mexican state-owned petroleum company. Pemex has a total asset worth of USD415.75 billion, and is the world's second largest non-publicly listed company by total market value, and Latin America's second largest enterprise by annual revenue as of 2009. Company produces such polymers, as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Solvay is raising its European capacity of hydroquinone by 20%, enhancing the security of supply on three continents and to meet increasing demand for diphenol inhibitors used as additives by the monomer industry, as per the company press release.

This capacity expansion at its plant in Saint-Fons, France is accomplished by debottlenecking the existing unit and follows a recent capacity increase in Zhenjiang, China. The project should be fully operational in Q2-2019.

“Solvay is committed to serve its customers’ long-term growing needs in all major regions and this new capacity increase in Europe will allow to continue to reliably supply our full range of monomer inhibitors,” said Peter Browning, President of Solvay’s Aroma Performance GBU.

Hydroquinone is key to process safety, transport and storage for monomer inhibition but also as a monomer itself in Polymer and Coatings applications.

The Saint-Fons Specialities plant in France is one of the 3 plants that makes up Solvay’s global inhibitor production network across Europe, North America and Asia, producing Hydroquinone; MEHQ (Monomethyl Ether of Hydroquinone); TBC (tertiary butyl-catechol) and PTZ (phenothiazine).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mitsui Chemicals has decided to establish a long glass fiber reinforced polypropylene (LGFPP) production plant at its Mitsui Advanced Composites (Zhongshan) manufacturing subsidiary in China, as per Apic-online.

The new facility, which will be located in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, will have a capacity of 3,500 t/y, increasing Mitsui Chemical's LGFPP production capacity to 10,500 t/y.

Completion is tentatively scheduled for February 2020 with operations expected to begin in September 2020.

As MRC informed before, in 2018, Mitsui Chemicals took its naphtha-fed steam cracker off-stream for a maintenance turnaround from mid-June to end-July 2018. Located in Sakai, Japan, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 500,000 mt/year and propylene production capacity of 280,000 mt/year.

Mitsui Chemicals is a leading manufacturer and supplier of value added specialty chemicals, plastics and materials for the automotive, healthcare, packaging, agricultural, building, and semiconductor and electronics markets. Mitsui Chemicals is a Japanese Chemicals company, a part of the Mitsui conglomerate. The company has a turnover of around 15 billion USD and has business interests in Japan, Europe, China, Southeast Asia and the USA. The company mainly deals in performance materials, petro and basic chemicals and functional polymeric materials.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Imports of suspension polyvinyl chloride (SPVC) into Ukraine decreased by 42% in the first two months of this year, compared to the same period in 2018 and reached about 7,900 tonnes. The main reason was a sufficient supply from the domestic producer, according to MRC DataScope.

Last month's SPVC imports to the Ukrainian market grew to 4,100 tonnes from 3,800 tonnes in January. Because of a decrease in capacity utilisation at Karpatneftekhim, some companies slightly increased purchases in foreign countries. Overall SPVC imports reached 7,900 tonnes in January-February 2019, compared to 13,700 tonnes a year earlier.

Sufficient supply and low prices helped the local producer to reduce the share of imports in the domestic market, while SPVC exports declined.
Structure of PVC imports into Ukraine over the reported period was as follows. Last month's imports of US SPVC shrank to 1,000 tonnes from 1,900 tonnes in January. Thus, imports of US PVC totalled 2,900 tonnes in the first two months of 2018, compared to 8,700 tonnes a year earlier.

February imports of European PVC into Ukraine increased to 2,900 tonnes, compared with 1,900 tonnes in January. Total imports of European PVC into Ukraine were about 4,800 tonnes in the first two months of the year, compared with 3,800 tonnes year on year.

It is also worth noting that due to the reduction in capacity utilisation, which was caused by the shutdown of its own ethylene production after a fire, Karpatneftekhim reduced export sales of PVC to 6,200 tonnes in February against 14,800 tonnes a month earlier. Exports of PVC in the first two months of the year exceeded 21,000 tonnes, down 21% year on year.
MRC