Taiyo Vinyl to resume PVC production

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Taiyo Vinyl is in plans to brought on-stream its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant following a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Japan informed that the company is likely to resume operations at the plant in end-July, 2019. The plant was shut for maintenance in end-June, 2019.

Located in Senboku in Japan, the PVC plant has a production capacity of 170,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported previously, Taiyo Vinyl took its PVC plant off-stream for a maintenance turnaround in early-March 2018. The planned maintenance remained in force for around 8 weeks. Located in Yokkaichi in Japan, the PVC plant has a production capacity of 310,000 mt/year.

Taiyo Vinyl Corporation, a subsidiary of Tosoh Group, is one of Japan's largest manufacturers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). The plant in Chiba is one of the company's key assests, which supplies 50% of its products to the domestic market. The company also produces PVC at the plants in Yokkaichi and Osaka with the annual capacity of 310,000 and 150,000 tonnes, respectively.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC), has shut its No. 1 high density polyethylene (HDPE) unit for maintenance, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Thailand, informed that, the company has halted operations at the plant for maintenance on July 18, 2019. The unit is expected to remain shut, for about 20 days.

Located at Map Ta Phut, Thailand, the No. 1 HDPE plant has a production capacity of 275,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed earlier, PTT started commercial operations at its new 400,000 mt/year metallocene C6 linear low density polyethylene plant at Map Ta Phut, Thailand, in the first quarter of 2018.

PTT Global Chemical is a leading player in the petrochemical industry and owns several petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 8.45 million tonnes a year.
mrcpast.com

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Yokogawa Electric Corporation announced that it has been selected by ExxonMobil to be the Open Process Automation (OPA) system integrator responsible for establishing the company’s OPA Test Bed, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Development work and experiments conducted on the Test Bed will support ExxonMobil’s effort to move towards a standards-based, open, secure and interoperable process control architecture.

ExxonMobil will use the Test Bed to evaluate candidate components and standards and provide the basis for moving OPA technology into initial industrial field trials. Yokogawa’s development office for the Test Bed will be located near ExxonMobil’s Houston Campus in Spring, Texas, and the initial stage is planned to be operational in Q4 2019.

ExxonMobil and Yokogawa are members of The Open Group Open Process Automatio Forum (OPAF), an international forum of end users, system integrators, suppliers, academia, and standards organizations who are working together to develop the specifications for utilizing OPA technology in next-generation process control systems. An OPA-based control system is designed to support the integration of best-in-class components and provide both configuration and application portability across components from different suppliers.

The ExxonMobil OPA Test Bed will leverage the existing OPA development work and technological expertise of Yokogawa’s US Technology Center. To house the Test Bed and facilitate the objectives of this collaborative project, Yokogawa will open an office near Spring, Texas. ExxonMobil intends to share the results of systems tests using the Test Bed with their collaboration partners and OPAF. ExxonMobil will also encourage their collaboration partners to utilize the Test Bed to evaluate additional components that will be used in their independent field trials.

"We are looking forward to working with Yokogawa to stand up and operate the Test Bed for ExxonMobil and our collaboration partners," stated Brad Houk, project manager for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company. "This is an important milestone in the use of OPAF’s standards to create an industrial control system. ExxonMobil’s key criteria for system integrator selection included a demonstrated understanding of the technical requirements to create an OPA system from heterogeneous components and the ability to function as an agnostic broker of components from all suppliers."

Tsuyoshi Abe, a Yokogawa senior vice president and head of the company's Marketing Headquarters, commented, “Yokogawa is proactively participating in open architecture initiatives such as Open Process Automation with industry players globally. We are honored to be selected for this key project, and are looking forward to working with ExxonMobil, its collaboration partners and the industry at the Test Bed facility to accelerate creation of an OPA ecosystem."

As MRC reported before, 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) -- BP Plc plans to shut the small gasoline-producing unit at its 430,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Whiting, Indiana, refinery for a planned overhaul by mid-August, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with plant operations.

The 65,000-bpd gasoline-producing Fluidic Catalytic Cracking Unit 600 (FCCU 600) will be shut along with other units at the Whiting refinery, the sources said.

As MRC informed previously, in May 2018, hte - the high throughput experimentation company was selected by BP to evaluate commercial catalysts for both naphtha reforming and hydrocracking applications using high throughput technology under commercially relevant conditions for its refineries around the world.

BP is one of the world's leading international oil and gas companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s crude oil throughput rose to a record in June, up 7.7% from a year earlier, following the start-up of two new, large refineries, reported Reuters with reference to official data.

Crude processing volumes last month reached 53.7 million tonnes, or about 13.07 million barrels per day (bpd), beating the previous record in April of 12.68 million bpd, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The hefty processing rates were supported by the start-up of two major new refineries. Private firm Hengli Petrochemical ramped up its 400,000-bpd refinery in Dalian to full capacity in late May and Zhejiang Petrochemical began trial runs at a similar-sized facility on the east coast.

"The high output data was mainly due to the two new plants, but still the figure exceeds our estimates as many refineries were shut for maintenance," said Wang Zhao, an analyst with Sublime Information Co, a local consultancy, based in Zibo in eastern China’s Shandong province.

"We expect throughput to be lower in the coming months on extended plant shutdowns because inventories of gasoline and diesel were at the high end and domestic fuel demand remained weak," said Wang.

Refineries in Shandong, the country’s hub for smaller independent plants, cut throughput to curb losses after Hengli marketed gasoline at a 12% discount to the rates offered by plants in Shandong.

The NBS data also showed that China’s crude oil output last month climbed 1% from a year earlier to 16.1 million tonnes, or about 3.92 million bpd, up from May’s 3.82 million bpd.

First-half crude output rose 0.8% from a year ago to 95.39 million tonnes. The tepid growth highlights the geological challenges of mature fields and the lack of new discoveries that state oil majors face in trying to boost domestic oil output.

Natural gas production in June rose 13.1% from a year earlier to 13.9 billion cubic meters (bcm). Output for the first half increased 10.3% from a year earlier to 86.4 bcm.

The much faster growth in gas production, which exceeds analysts forecast of 6% to 8%, was spurred by state oil majors’ efforts in focusing spending increases on production of the cleaner-burning fuel.
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