Sberbank receives rights for 80% stake in Antipinsky refinery

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia’s largest bank Sberbank said it had decided to recover debts from Russia’s Antipinsky refinery ahead of schedule and that it had received rights for 80% of the stock in the refinery, reported Reuters.

The Antipinsky oil refinery, which has a capacity of 9 million tonnes per year, said on Monday it had filed for bankruptcy, weeks after a London court ordered its assets be frozen in response to a lawsuit from a trading house.

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 (MRC) -- AMG Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. announced that its Supervisory Board has approved a capital project to double its spent catalyst recycling capacity by building a new, greenfield plant in the operational vicinity of its current spent catalyst processing plant in Cambridge Ohio, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

This new plant will be financed with the proceeds from the sale of up to $350 million tax-exempt bonds to be issued by the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority. The proceeds of the bonds will be lent to AMG Vanadium LLC, a subsidiary of AMG, and AMG will guarantee the repayment of the bonds.

The bonds will be senior, unsecured obligations of AMG. AMG has engaged Citigroup Global Markets and Morgan Stanley to act as underwriters with respect to the bonds. Subject to necessary approvals from the Ohio Air Quality Development Authority, AMG expects the bonds to be marketed at the end of June.

AMG is a global critical materials company at the forefront of CO2 reduction trends. AMG produces highly engineered specialty metals and mineral products and provides related vacuum furnace systems and services to the transportation, infrastructure, energy, and specialty metals & chemicals end markets. AMG Critical Materials produces aluminum master alloys and powders, ferrovanadium, natural graphite, chromium metal, antimony, lithium, tantalum, niobium and silicon metal. AMG Technologies produces titanium aluminides and titanium alloys for the aerospace market; designs, engineers, and produces advanced vacuum furnace systems; and operates vacuum heat treatment facilities, primarily for the transportation and energy industries.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- KBR, Inc. announced that it has been awarded a contract by Sonatrach and Cepsa to provide Basic Engineering Design (BED) and Front End Engineering Design (FEED) for the Rhoude el Krouf Field (RKF) redevelopment in Algeria, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The RKF field, located in the Algeria desert south-East of Hassi Messaoud, includes an oil and gas Central Processing Facilities (CPF) with gathering network and all associated structures. The redevelopment will add an additional oil and gas treatment train to the existing facilities. This project is part of Sonatrach’s and Cepsa’s objectives to support the increase of Algeria’s oil and gas capacity.

The project will be executed from KBR’s London and Chennai offices over an eight month period.

"KBR is proud of its more than 45 year history in Algeria," said Jay Ibrahim, KBR President, Energy Solutions - Services. "This project will demonstrate KBR’s ability to utilize its global resources to provide the full capabilities of engineering and FEED services."

As MRC wrote previously, in May 2018, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) announced it had signed a project development agreement with Cepsa of Spain for a new, world-scale Linear Alkylbenzene (LAB) facility in ADNOC’s refining and petrochemicals complex in Ruwais, UAE.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sasol Ltd., the world’s biggest maker of fuel from coal, said the cost of its giant Lake Charles chemicals project in Louisiana will balloon to as much as USD12.9 billion, or about 50% more than initially planned, said Bloomberg.

The cost blowout is a further setback for the development that’s part of the South African company’s plan to expand internationally. It has already suffered a number of budget increases because of factors including weather delays. Sasol shares slumped the most in 20 years after the announcement on Wednesday.

“We’re extremely disappointed with the increase” in costs, co-Chief Executive Officer Bongani Nqwababa said on a conference call Wednesday. The company said in a statement it’s taken measures since February to “further strengthen the oversight, leadership for the project and frequency of reporting,” and will accelerate a previously announced asset-sale program.

The Lake Charles Chemical Project -- dubbed LCCP -- will, once completed, boost the portion of chemicals in Sasol’s sales mix to 70%. It’s one of two massive plants originally planned in the U.S., but the second -- a gas-to-liquids project -- was abandoned during the oil-price crash. The chemical plant was approved in 2014.

Sasol announced on Wednesday a new cost range of USD12.6 billion to USD12.9 billion for the LCCP project, about USD1 billion more than it forecast three months ago. Back in 2016, then-CEO David Constable had said an increase to USD11 billion was a “worst-case scenario.” The company attributed the latest hike to a “correction for duplication of investment allowances,” higher contract expenses, unanticipated work and defective materials.

In last June, 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.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Daelim Industrial Co.Ltd is in plans to shut linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant for a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in South Korea informed that the plant is planned to be taken off-stream on May 23, 2019 and it is likely to remain under maintenance for around four weeks.

Located in Yeosu, South Korea, the LLDPE plant has a production capacity of 260,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, in February 2019, Saudi Aramco with its partner Total announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Daelim, a South Korean petrochemical company. Under the MoU, Daelim is planning to build a new 80,000 tons state-of-the-art Polyisobutylene (PIB) plant, which is expected to come on-stream in 2024. This agreement is another step to drive Saudi Aramco’s petrochemicals growth strategy. This follows Saudi Aramco’s announcement in October 2018 to launch an engineering study to build a large petrochemical complex in Jubail.
MRC