ExxonMobil Baytown, Texas refinery gasoline unit shut for another month

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The small gasoline-producing unit at Exxon Mobil Corp’s 560,500 barrel per day (bpd) Baytown, Texas, refinery will be shut for at least another month of repairs to a fire-damaged hydrotreater, reported Reuters with reference to Gulf Coast market sources.

The 90,000 bpd gasoline-producing Fluidic Catalytic Cracking Unit 2 (FCCU 2) was shut by a March 16 fire on Hydrofining Unit-9 (HU 9), which removes sulfur from the gasoline.

Exxon spokesman Jeremy Eikenberry declined to comment.

The company is building a new heater for HU 9, which was severely damaged in the March 16 fire. The new heater is not expected to arrive for a month, the sources said.

Exxon attempted to partially restart HU 9 in April, but according to the sources, operating one processing train on the unit was not possible.

The company also canceled plans to operate FCCU 2 without HU 9. Without HU 9 removing sulfur from the gasoline produced by FCCU 2, the gasoline will not be in specification for sale, the sources said.

As MRC wrote previously, in October 2017, ExxonMobil Chemical Company commenced production on the first of two new 650,000 tons-per-year high-performance polyethylene (PE) lines at its plastics plant in Mont Belvieu, Texas. The full project, part of the company’s multi-billion dollar expansion project in the Baytown area and ExxonMobil’s broader Growing the Gulf expansion initiative, will increase the plant’s polyethylene capacity by approximately 1.3 million tons per year.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Celanese Corporation, a global chemical and specialty materials company, has announced that its subsidiary, Celanese US Holdings LLC, has completed a registered offering of USD500 million of US dollar-denominated Senior Notes due in 2024, said the producer in its press release.

The company simultaneously entered into a cross-currency swap to effectively convert the Notes into a euro-denominated borrowing.

The net borrowing rate to the company will be 1.03%, comprised of the 3.52% yield on the Notes, minus the impact of the currency swap. Proceeds from the Notes will be used to refinance existing shorter term euro-denominated debt. The Notes are guaranteed on a senior unsecured basis by the company and certain Celanese domestic subsidiaries, similar to prior issuances.

"This deal is another transaction that will extend our debt maturity profile, while at the same time reducing our interest expense. The consistent improvement in our business performance is reflected in an improved credit profile and credit rating, allowing us to extend our debt maturities at lower borrowing costs," said Scott Richardson, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

As MRC reported earlier, Celanese Corporation has increased May list and off-list selling prices for Vinyl Acetate Monomer (VAM) sold in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Outside China (AOC). The price increases below were effective for orders shipped on or after 24 April, 2019, or as contracts otherwise allow, and are incremental to any previously announced increases. Thus, VAM prices rose, as follows:

- by EUR100/mt - for Europe, the Middle East & Africa;
- by USD50/mt - for AOC.

Besides, Celanese increased its prices of emulsion polymers by USD25/mt for AOC and prices of acetic anhydride by EUR30/mt for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 7,700 employees worldwide and had 2018 net sales of USD7.2 billion.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A magnitude 8 earthquake killed one person, destroyed dozens of homes and disrupted some oil operations as it rocked Peru early on Sunday, authorities said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The quake - the biggest to hit Peru since 2007 - was felt across the country and in neighboring Ecuador and Colombia after striking the sparsely-populated region of Loreto in Peru’s northern Amazon.

Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra said the hardest hit areas were the towns of Yurimaguas and Tarapoto. “In reality, it’s affected all of the Peruvian jungle,” Vizcarra told journalists in broadcast comments as he surveyed the damage in Yurimaguas.

A 48-year-old man was killed in the region of Cajamarca after a boulder struck his home, emergency officials said. Peru’s National Emergency Center (COEN) said there were at least 11 people injured and more than 50 homes destroyed. Several schools, churches, hospitals and clinics were also damaged.

State-owned oil company Petroperu said the quake created a “minor” leak in a pipe at its Talara refinery on the Pacific coast that it said it has since controlled. It also suspended oil pumping at its Station 1 facility in Loreto in order to evaluate damage it detected there, it said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for Canadian oil company Frontera Energy, which operates Peru’s largest oil block in of Loreto, said there were no damages to its installations.

TV images showed large fissures in a highway in Cajamarca and piles of mud and debris that had swept onto other roads.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Poland’s second-biggest oil refiner Lotos is looking to buy upstream assets to boost its own oil production, a strategy made all the more important given recent problems with supplies from Russia, reported Reuters with reference to the company's deputy head of investment.

Most of the crude refined at Lotos’s refinery in the northern Polish city of Gdansk comes from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline, but flows via Druzhba were suspended last month due to contamination, sending shockwaves through global oil markets.

Lotos and its bigger rival PKN Orlen have said that their refineries are working normally thanks to supplies via sea and oil reserves. However, France’s Total suspended some units at its Leuna refinery in Germany for technical checks.

“We take advantage from our location at the seaside. We intensively use supplies by sea from Primorsk (in Russia) - this is the main element of our actions in this situation. We also use (Poland’s) mandatory oil reserves, but to a small extent,” Patryk Demski told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Katowice this week.

Lotos is expected to merge with Orlen under a government plan to create a bigger player capable of competing on international markets, although the plan needs EU approval and is not imminent.

The suspension of oil flows would not have a significant impact on Lotos’s second-quarter results, as margins at its refinery have not fallen drastically, he said.

The disruption caused by the contaminated Russian oil makes Lotos’s plans to acquire Norwegian oil assets and reduce its reliance on Russia all the more important, Demski said.

"The necessity to stop oil supplies from Russia confirms the legitimacy of our acquisition plans, which could help us increase our own upstream (business)... our continuous observation of what is happening in the market as well as the project of Norwegian assets acquisitions are an important element of building the diversification of our supply portfolio," Demski said.

Oil majors, including Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell, have scaled down their presence in Norway by selling or merging their assets in the mature region to focus on new growth opportunities elsewhere.

Lotos has been looking for acquisitions in upstream for years.

"We are looking at the oil majors’ exit strategy from the Norwegian Continental Shelf and we are considering potential acquisitions," Demski said, adding that Lotos is more interested in buying a structured part of a company’s upstream assets rather than a single field.

"All the time we are intensely looking around on the market and 50,000 barrels of daily output is a feasible goal for us," he said.

As MRC informed before, in November 2017, Lotos got its first shipment of crude oil from the United States on Thursday, part of its wider plan to diversify oil supplies and reduce reliance on Russian deliveries. State-run Lotos, like bigger rival PKN Orlen, refines mostly Russian oil but is aiming to diversify its supplies. As of late 2017, around 25% of the oil it refines comes from sources other than Russia.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA is shipping crude during June and July for storage in China to more quickly respond to demand from the country’s independent refiners, sources said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

China is the world’s biggest oil importer driven partially by demand from its independent refiners, known as teapots, centered in the eastern province of Shandong. Petroleo Brasileiro, or Petrobras, is seeking markets for its rising crude output and hopes to expand market share in China, where Brazil was the fifth-largest supplier in the first quarter of 2019.

Storing the oil will enable Petrobras to sell smaller parcels of oil promptly to the teapots, which account for about a fifth of China’s crude import demand, and expand its customer base beyond state refiner China Petroleum and Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, the sources said.

“The idea for storage is to sell small parcels and to be more competitive in this market. The main thing is to have oil anytime,” one of the sources said, adding that this will allow Petrobras to react to prompt demand.

Petrobras inked an agreement with Qingdao Port International Co in December to lease storage tanks at its joint venture Qingdao Shihua Crude Oil Terminal Co that can hold about 2 million barrels of oil, according to the sources and media reports at the time.

To fill those tanks, Petrobras has chartered the very large crude carrier (VLCC) Maran Cleo which is scheduled to arrive at Qingdao in Shandong on June 24. The VLCC contains 2 million barrels of Lula crude, part of which has been sold while the rest will go into storage, one of the sources said.

The producer has another VLCC that will arrive between July 10 and 15 at Qingdao that contains about 1 million barrels of Buizos crude for storage, he added. Buizos is a new medium-sweet grade that was first exported late last year.

The sources declined to be named as they were not authorized to speak to the media. Petrobras did not respond to a request for comment.

Qingdao Port International could not be reached for comment.

As MRC informed before, in October 2017, Petrobras’ minority stakes in Braskem and Deten Quimica was excluded from Petrobras’s divestment program, according to a government decree published in Brazil’s Official Gazette. The decree prevents Petrobras from immediately selling its minority stake in Braskem, which had been announced last year. A new decree will be required to release the stock sale.

Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras is an integrated energy firm. Petrobras' activities include exploration, exploitation and production of oil from reservoir wells, shale and other rocks as well as refining, processing, trade and transport of oil and oil products, natural gas and other fluid hydrocarbons, in addition to other energy-related activities.
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