Fire-damaged oil refinery heads for auction

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The fate of the largest East Coast oil refinery is set to be decided in an auction that could determine whether the Philadelphia plant is restarted or used for a different purpose for the first time in over a century, reported Reuters.

The refinery’s owner, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, is scheduled to reveal the winning bidder on Wednesday during a hearing at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, which will need to approve the sale.

PES fell into bankruptcy on July 21, a month after a fire and explosions destroyed a portion of its 335,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery complex. It wound down the roughly 150-year-old plant and laid off hundreds of workers over the following weeks.

More than a dozen groups initially showed interest in buying all or parts of the PES refinery and its more than 1,300-acre(526-hectare) lot.

Some bidders have since dropped out, though it is not clear how many.

S.G. Preston Co, a biofuels company that bid for the site, was not in the final round, a source familiar with the bidding said. An official with the company was not immediately available for comment.

The PES site located less than three miles (5 km) from downtown Philadelphia has also attracted bids from several real estate developers.

One of the groups proposed to model itself after the Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, which was turned into a campus for company headquarters, including clothing retailer Urban Outfitters, while operating a section for commercial shipping, a source with knowledge of the plan said.

Most of the bids from real estate developers involved keeping the site as an industrial operation, the source said.

Only one group, led by PES’s former Chief Executive Officer Philip Rinaldi, has publicly said it planned to restart the complex as an oil refinery at full capacity.

PES’s unsecured creditors, which include companies that had long provided contract work to PES, as well as workers unions, have pushed for a buyer that would restart the refinery, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

As MRC wrote previously, in November 2019, US and local officials were opposing the sale procedure for the bankrupt Philadelphia Energy Solutions oil refinery, arguing the plan discourages bidders and keeps the city locked out of the process.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- GEP, a leading provider of procurement software and procurement services to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises worldwide, announced that Brunei Shell Petroleum Company Sdn Bhd (BSP) has awarded a contract for SMART by GEP, the industry's leading procurement software platform, accordng to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Headquartered in Brunei, BSP is the latest market-leading organization to select SMART by GEP.

BSP will use the SMART by GEP unified procurement software platform to manage complete source-to-pay across its subsidiary operations. This will include a full range of functions, such as spend analysis, savings tracking, sourcing, contract and supplier management, purchasing and invoice handling.

SMART by GEP provides complete source-to-pay functionality in one user-friendly platform, inclusive of spend analysis, sourcing, contract management, supplier management, procure-to-pay, savings project management and savings tracking, invoicing and other related functionalities. The award-winning S2P platform is native to touch and mobile technologies, enabling users to work anywhere, anytime, on any device.

As MRC informed earlier, Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island in early December 2019, following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

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

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russian oil producer Rosneft said that its German subsidiary Rosneft Deutschland GmbH had completed the deal to acquire a 3.57% stake in Germany’s Bayernoil Raffineriegesellschaft mbH from BP, said the producer.

The deal increased Rosneft’s stake in the Bayernoil refinery to 28.57% from 25%, Rosneft said in a statement, adding that the deal also increased its share in the refinery’s capacity to almost 3 million tonnes a year and strengthened its marketing presence in Germany’s Bavaria and Austria.

As MRC informed earlier, Rosneft, which owns downstream assets in Germany including stakes in a number of oil refineries, plans to invest around EUR600 million (USD690 million) in the German downstream market.

In January 2017, Russia's Rosneft and its shareholder BP completed dissolution of Ruhr Oel, their refining joint venture in Germany. Rosneft said with the restructuring it had embarked on developing its own business in Germany and had created a new subsidiary called Rosneft Deutschland.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

Rosneft became Russia's largest publicly traded oil company in March 2013 after the USD55 billion takeover of TNK-BP, which was Russia’s third-largest oil producer at the time.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- India’s imports of Middle Eastern oil plunged to a four-year low in 2019, tanker data obtained from sources shows, as the energy-hungry nation diversifies its supplies to cut costs and help shield itself from geopolitical tensions, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

India, the world’s third-biggest oil consumer, imports about 84% of its oil needs and traditionally relies on the Middle East for the majority of its supplies. However, the region’s share of India’s crude shrank to 60% last year - down from 65% a year ago and the lowest since 2015 - as record output from the United States and countries like Russia offered opportunities for importers to tap other sources.

India shipped in 2.68 million barrels per day (bpd) oil from the Middle East in 2019, down about 10% from 2018, and around 1.8 million bpd from elsewhere, the data reviewed by Reuters showed.

Deeper than expected oil output cuts by OPEC and allies, shouldered by Saudi Arabia, and less supply from Iran due to U.S. sanctions also dented India’s intake of Middle Eastern oil, said Ehsan Ul Haq, analyst with Refinitiv.

Last year, sanctions and output cuts by OPEC and allies, known as OPEC+, reduced the group’s supplies by 1.9 million bpd from 2018, while non-OPEC supply rose by 2 million bpd, the International Energy Agency said in its latest report.

The IEA forecast that producers outside the OPEC+ pact would grow supplies by 2.1 million bpd in 2020. India is working on a strategy to diversify its oil supply sources to cut dependence on the Middle East, Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said last week, adding that some refiners are in advance negotiations to boost Russian oil imports.

The drive to expand crude sources also reflects a push by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bolster ties with countries like Russia and the United States.

India’s overall oil imports in 2019 fell by about 2.1% to 4.48 million bpd, the data showed, because most refiners temporarily shut processing units for upgrades ahead of new fuel standards in 2020. India is migrating to Euro VI compliant fuel from April 1.

Imports from CIS nations rose in 2019 by about 65% to 171,000 bpd, the data showed. Intake of African grades rose by 7.3% to about 713,000 bpd, while U.S. supplies surged by about 63% to 181,000 bpd.

U.S. oil accounted for about 4% of India’s overall imports in 2019, up from just 2.5% a year earlier. “The opening of an arbitrage window for U.S. oil during the year changed oil flows. The differential was enough to take care of shipping,” said Haq.

Demand for heavy Middle Eastern grades was also affected by a shift in bunker fuel specifications from January, following new industry rules promoting lower sulfur fuels. “Most Middle Eastern grades yield high sulfur fuel oil (HSFO) and because of new marine fuel norms, refiners are buying more from other producers to cut production of HSFO and increase output of very low sulfur fuel oil,” Haq added.

As MRC informed earlier, state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) will invest about Rs25,000 crore to set up an ethylene cracker plant at Rasayani, 50 kilometres from its Mumbai refinery, as the firm pushes further into the petrochemicals business to fuel growth.

BPCL will commission its Rs5,236 crore Propylene Derivative Petrochemical Project (PDPP) at Kochi refinery for manufacturing niche petrochemicals in the next six months. To expand its product portfolio further, BPCL is investing Rs11,130 crore to set up a facility in Kochi refinery for manufacturing Polyols, Propylene Glycol and Mono-Ethylene Glycol.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) is an Indian state-controlled oil and gas company headquartered in Mumbai, India. Bharat Petroleum owns refineries at Mumbai, Maharashtra and Kochi, Kerala (Kochi Refineries) with a capacity of 12 and 9.5 million metric tonnes per year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Canadian oil producers and refiners have cut processing rates last week as extreme cold weather grips Western Canada, reproted Reuters with reference to traders familiar with the matter.

Cold weather has spread across western Canada this week. In Edmonton, the capital of Canada’s main oil-producing province, Alberta, temperatures dropped to minus 36 degrees Celsius (minus 33 Fahrenheit) last Wednesday, according to Environment Canada.

Syncrude, one of the largest producers of crude oil from Canada’s oil sands, as well as North West Refining (NWR), which operates the Sturgeon refinery, have declared force majeure, two traders familiar with the matter said.

Force majeure is a declaration that unforeseeable circumstances prevented a party from fulfilling a contract.

Syncrude is a joint venture majority owned by Suncor Energy Inc, with minority stakes held by Imperial Oil Ltd and others. It can produce up to 360,000 barrels per day, upgrading thick bitumen to light oil. A spokeswoman for the Suncor did not respond to a request for comment.

NWR did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, Shell Canada’s Scotford facility is operating at reduced rates, two sources said. The Shell Scotford Complex consists of a bitumen upgrader, oil refinery, and chemicals plant. Shell declined to comment.

"We think the reduced runs are due to upgraders being short natural gas. Nat gas receipts are down by about 1-1.5 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) due to freeze-offs," one source at a producer said.

Upgraders need natural gas to create steam to produce the hydrogen that converts bitumen into synthetic crude oil.

The weather-related disruptions are the latest in a series of issues to hit the Canadian oil market. Inventories are already at record highs due to a recent outage on the Keystone pipeline and a Canadian National rail strike.

High inventories are weighing on prices. The discount for Western Canada Select (WCS) heavy blend crude for February delivery in Hardisty, Alberta widened to the biggest since December 2018 versus US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude last week.

As MRC informed earlier, Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island in early December 2019, following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
MRC