Chinese Hengyi exports first LPG cargo from Brunei refinery

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s Hengyi Petrochemical Co Ltd, a joint petrochemical venture between China and Brunei, exported its first cargo of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from its newly commissioned refinery in Brunei, a company executive told Reuters.

A shipment of "standard cargo size" was loaded for export on Sunday from the 160,000 barrels-per-day refinery in Pulau Muara Besar, the executive said.

The company announced on Sunday its refinery and petrochemical complex in Brunei entered commercial operations after trial productions started two-and-half months ago.

As MRC wrote previously, in September Hengyi Industries produced qualified petrochemical (PC) products at its new refinery and petrochemical complex at Pulau Muara Besar in Brunei. The project includes a 160,000 barrels/d crude oil refinery, a 1 M tonnes/y aromatics facility and a 500,000 tonnes/y benzene unit.

Hengyi Petrochemicals is targeting to start up its new 1.5m tonne/year PX unit in November.

Paraxylene is a raw material for the synthesis of terephthalic acid (TFA) - an intermediate for the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

According to ICIS-MRC Price Report, plant of New Polymers Senege, one of the Russian PET chips producers, shut production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) for scheduled maintenance on 1 October 2019. According to a source in the company, the shutdown will take about a month. The exact date of the completion of the turnaround was not reported.

Hengyi Industries is a joint venture between China's Zhejiang Hengyi Group and Damai Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary under the Brunei government's Strategic Development Capital Fund. They own 70% and 30% of the shares respectively.
MRC

Shell appoints new head of downstream business

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell has appointed Huibert Vigeveno to head its downstream businesss, the refining, trading and marketing operations that are to become a key pillar for the oil and gas company as it transitions to cleaner energy, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Vigeveno, 50, previously led Shell's global commercial business and rose to prominence when he oversaw the integration of smaller rival BG Group after its USD53 billion acquisition in 2016.

His appointment comes several months after Wael Sawan replaced Andy Brown as head of the oil and gas production, or upstream, division.

Both Vigeveno and Sawan, together with Maarten Wetselaar who heads the Integrated gas division, are seen by many in the company as future candidates to eventually succeed Chief Executive Ben van Beurden.

Dutch national Vigeveno will replace John Abbott, who has headed the downstream division since 2013. Abbot led Shell's restructuring of refining and chemicals operations, which included selling refineries and stakes in joint ventures in Saudi Arabia and the United States to focus on hubs in the Netherlands, Singapore and the US Gulf Coast.

Shell has also expanded its retail business in recent years.

Together with its chemicals operations, the Anglo-Dutch company hopes downstream will become a major source of revenue as demand for plastics grows and consumers switch to higher-quality fuels and electric vehicles.

Vigeveno will assume his new role, and will also join Shell's executive committee, on Jan. 1.

As MRC wrote before, in mid-October 2019, Royal Dutch Shell Plc restarted the hydrocracker at its 225,300 barrel-per-day (bpd) Norco, Louisiana, refinery. The 40,000 bpd hydrocracker was shut on Sept. 9 for a planned month-long overhaul. A longer than expected restart of the unit stretched the outage to six weeks, the sources said.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,589,580 tonnes in the first nine months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 976,790 tonnes in January-September 2019, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
MRC

ExxonMobil-Albemarle introduce new suite of hydroprocessing catalyst

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Catalysts and Licensing LLC and Albemarle Corporation announced today a transformative hydroprocessing suite of catalyst and service solutions for the refining industry called the Galexia platform, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The platform enables an improved way of doing business, ensuring customer demands are better addressed at every stage throughout the value chain. “Refiners demand not only superior products, but greater opportunities to create value and optimize their operations,” said Dan Moore, president of ExxonMobil Catalysts and Licensing LLC. “With a unique, comprehensive solutions suite in the Galexia platform, we are focused on enabling our customers to achieve greater levels of productivity amid an increasingly competitive environment."

Uniquely leveraging the technical experience, refinery operating know-how and successful track record of both companies, users are given access to state-of-the-art hydroprocessing catalysts and our vast experience in catalyst load optimization. The Galexia platform goes beyond traditional product offerings to help refiners optimize performance and efficiency by analyzing operations and identifying opportunities to extract additional value across the plant.

"The Galexia platform will generate great value as we are combining complementary strengths in years of catalyst development and application knowledge with unique refinery operation experience,” said Raphael Crawford, president of Albemarle Catalysts. “We are ready to collaborate with our customers to take advantage of the full potential of catalyst activity."

The collaboration between ExxonMobil and Albemarle builds on and strengthens their long-term relationship in specialty hydroprocessing. As a result, customers will benefit from access to combined pretreat and dewaxing solutions through a single partner that provides both refinery owner/operator and catalyst experience.

Together, the two companies developed and commercialized the Celestia and Nebula catalysts, which enhance performance and profit margins of both hydrocrackers and distillate hydrotreating units around the world. Albemarle’s STAX® technology can optimize combinations of Nebula, Celestia and MIDW™ catalysts, demonstrating unparalleled performance under the most challenging process conditions - unlocking value beyond the hydrotreating unit made possible with ExxonMobil’s operating knowledge.

As MRC informed before, in September 2019, ExxonMobil announced plans to spend GBP140 million over the next two years in an additional investment program at its Fife ethylene plant, which has a capacity of more than 800,000 t/y.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,436,390 tonnes in the first eight months of 2019, up by 9% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, the PP consumption in the Russian market was 909,260 tonnes in January-August 2019, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.

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

Repsol to license petrochemical technologies

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Repsol has signed a collaboration agreement to license ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA), ethylene butyl acrylate (EBA) copolymer and low-density polyethylene (LDPE) production technology with American engineering company Engineers & Constructors International (ECI), depository of the high-pressure technology originally developed and licensed by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) through its UK subsidiary, Simon Carves Engineering, Ltd., reported Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Under this agreement, Repsol is the operational partner that provides product knowledge, applications and operating support (training, technical services, operating procedures, etc.).

For Repsol, this agreement represents a milestone in positioning its Chemicals Business as a technology licensor together with a partner of recognized international prestige and a benchmark for high-pressure technology in the petrochemical industry.

With this agreement, Repsol will capitalize on the know-how developed over 40 years in both production and processing, as well as on the commercial knowledge of development of differentiated EVA/EBA copolymer and LDPE applications.

This agreement represents a differential lever to support the growth of the Chemicals Business within its strategic positioning in the EVA/EBA copolymer market.

As MRC informed earlier, Spain’s Repsol will shut down its cracker in Tarragona (Spain) for maintenance in the fourth quarter of 2019. The turnaround at this steam cracker, which produces 702,000 mt/year of ethylene and 372,000 mt/year of propylene, was pushed back from Q3 2019. The exact dates of maintenance works are not disclosed.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,436,390 tonnes in the first eight months of 2019, up by 9% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, the PP consumption in the Russian market was 909,260 tonnes in January-August 2019, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.

Repsol S.A is an integrated Spanish oil and gas company with operations in 28 countries. The bulk of its assets are located in Spain.
MRC

Univar Q3 net income slumps

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Univar Solutions Inc., a global chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value-added services, announced its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2019, said the company.

Earnings per diluted share of USD0.01, compared to USD0.35 per diluted share, in the prior year third quarter. The current quarter increase from the addition of Nexeo's earnings and better operating performance was more than offset by the impact of taxes (USD0.18), costs to integrate Nexeo ($0.07), and non-cash charges (USD0.05).

Adjusted earnings per diluted share of USD0.36 compared to $0.40 in the prior year third quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA grew 17.3 percent to USD184.2 million, and Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 30 basis points to 7.7 percent from the prior year.

Net cash provided by operating activities increased to USD214.7 million from USD46.4 million, compared to third quarter last year, driven by lower net working capital as well as improved net working capital efficiency.

Net debt decreased USD165.4 million from the second quarter and leverage ratio of 3.9x decreased from 4.1x at June 30, 2019.

Full year outlook for Adjusted EBITDA revised to a range of USD700 million to USD725 million from the previous estimate of USD725 million to USD740 million, as increased earnings from legacy Nexeo and synergies are partially offset by further contraction of global industrial market demand for chemicals and ingredients.

Company growth from improved operating performance and the acquisition of Nexeo is being challenged by the global manufacturing slowdown, which has challenged company assumptions that industrial demand for chemicals and ingredients would be steady overall from 2018.

As MRC informed earlier, Univar Inc., a global chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value-added services, announced its Board of Directors has approved a Certificate of Amendment of the Certificate of Incorporation of the Company, to officially change the corporate name from Univar Inc. to Univar Solutions Inc., effective September 1, 2019.

It was earlier also written, Univar Inc., a global chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value-added services has announced the expansion of their agreement with BASF to include the Care Chemicals business for the US Home, Industrial & Institutional, as well as Vehicle Care product lines.

As MRC informed earlier, BASF would expand the capacity of ethylene oxide and ethylene oxide derivatives at its Verbund site in Antwerp, Belgium. The total investment adds about 400 000 tpy to BASF’s production capacity for the corresponding products with an expected investment amount exceeding EUR500 million.

Ethylene is a feedstock for producing polyethylene (PE).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,255,800 tonnes in the first seven months of 2019, up by 9% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased.

Univar Solutions is a leading global chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value added services to customers across a wide range of industries. With the industry's largest private transportation fleet and North American sales force, a vast supplier network, deep market and regulatory knowledge, world-class formulation and recipe development, unparalleled logistics know-how, and industry-leading digital tools, Univar Solutions is a committed ally to customers and suppliers, helping them anticipate, navigate, and leverage meaningful growth opportunities.
MRC