Sinopec Jinling refinery exports gasoline for first time

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec’s Jinling refinery exported a cargo of 35,600 tonnes of gasoline from its Nanjing plant to Singapore on May 12, marking its first light distillate shipment to a foreign destination, reported Reuters with reference to the company's statement.

Sinopec is boosting exports of a range of refined fuel products to ease a build-up of domestic supplies, the company said via its official newspaper.

China raised fuel export quotas by 30% in its latest allocation as record refinery output exceeds domestic demand for fuel.

As MRC wrote before, in September 2018, China's Sinopec Corp joined a group planning to build an oil refinery in Alberta, an enterprise that would strengthen demand for the Canadian province's heavily discounted crude.

Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest scale integrated energy and chemical company with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. Its principal business includes: exploring, developing, producing and trading crude oil and natural gas; producing, storing, transporting and distributing and marketing petroleum products, petrochemical products, synthetic fiber, fertilizer and other chemical products. Its refining capacity and ethylene capacity rank No.2 and No.4 globally. Sinopec listed in Hong Kong, New York, London and Shanghai in August 2001. Sinopec Group, the parent company of Sinopec Corp., is ranked the 5th in Fortune Global 500 in 2012.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Nanjing?Sasol said it has reached beneficial operation of its new alkoxylation plant in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China, the company's "largest" expansion project in the region, as per Apic-online.

The facility, with a capacity of around 150,000 t/y, is based on state-of-the-art technology and has the option of using branched or linear alcohols to meet differentiated customer requirements.

As part of the project, Sasol also expanded its research and development and technical support capabilities within the Nanjing Chemical Industrial Park.

As MRC reported earlier, in July 2018, Honeywell announced that Secunda Synfuels Operations, an operating division of Sasol South Africa Ltd., will use a Honeywell Connected Plant service to monitor the operating reliability of its two Honeywell UOP CCR Platforming units at its refinery in Secunda, South Africa.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia’s Antipinsky oil refinery said it had filed for bankruptcy, weeks after a London court ordered its assets be frozen in response to a lawsuit from a trading house, said Hydracarbonprocessing.

The refinery, which has a capacity of 9 million tonnes per year, had halted operations on several occasions in recent months because of a lack of funds to pay for crude oil deliveries, according to industry sources.

Last month, a London court issued a worldwide order to freeze 225 million euros (USD251 million) in assets belonging to the refinery in response to a lawsuit by Russia’s VTB Commodities Trading.

The court order applied to the refinery’s equipment and property in Russia’s Siberian region of Tyumen, as well as petroleum products stored there and at one of its tankers in the northern port of Murmansk, among other assets.

The order also forbade the refinery from selling vacuum gas oil (VGO) to other companies without the consent of VTB Commodities Trading.

Court data on Monday showed there were 346.5 billion roubles (USD5.37 billion) of claims against the refinery.

The refinery, which last month announced plans to file for bankruptcy, alleged its insolvency was in part tied to the fact that some traders had stopped making advance payments for oil products.

“Unfortunately, in 2019 a string of traders, including VTB Commodities Trading, in violation of agreements that had been previously reached, stopped providing advances for the purchase of petroleum products,” the refinery said in a statement.

“This led to a decrease in the volume of purchased oil and to the plant stopping its processing on April 26.”

As MRC informed earlier, Russia’s Antipinsky oil refinery does not plan to receive oil this month and has removed itself from the delivery schedule. A London court has issued a worldwide order to freeze 225 million euros (USD252 million) in assets belonging to the oil refinery, owned by New Stream Group.

JSC Antipinsky Refinery was founded in July 2004 on the territory of one of the major oil and gas producing constituents of the Russian Federation - Tyumen Region, where most of Russian oil (64%) and natural gas (91%) reserves are concentrated.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC0 -- Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Lyashenko said that Minsk was able to raise the volume of oil it processes and had proposed to Russia to increase its deliveries to the Naftan oil refinery, reported Reuters.

Belarus plans to seek compensation from Russia for export and transit revenues that it did not receive due to the contamination of oil via the Druzhba pipeline.

As MRC informed earlier, Belarus state oil firm Belneftekhim said in a statement in early May that not enough clean oil is available for the Novopolotsk refinery to work at its optimal capacity, after contaminated oil was received via the Russian Druzhba pipeline.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- April imports of high density polyethylene (HDPE) into Russia decreased to 31,600 tonnes from 32,800 tonnes a month earlier. However, these figures have been the record-breaking imports since December 2017, according to MRC's DataScope report.
The record high imports were last registered in November-December 2017, when they exceeded 32,000 tonnes per month. Such high imports in late 2017 were caused by the scheduled and long outage at some of production capacities of Russia's second largest HDPE producer - Stavrolen. This year' record imports were caused by higher HDPE shipments from producers in Central Asia.

In October 2018, a new gas chemical complex with a total capacity of just over 380,000 tonnes per year was launched in Turkmenistan, which led to an increase in supply of HDPE in Central Asia. At the same time, the new producer has offered for sale injection moulding and pipe grade HDPE so far.

Thus, overall HDPE imports into Russia exceeded 107,900 tonnes in the first four months of 2019, whereas a year earlier this figure was 80,800 tonnes. The following countries were the top five countries in terms of polyethylene (PE) shipments in 2019: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Finland, South Korea and Thailand.

MRC