PTT plans multi-billion-dollar capex over next five years

MOSCOW (MRC) -- State-owned Thai energy group PTT Pcl plans a multi-billion dollar capital spending spree over the next five years that will include expanding in liquefied natural gas and investing in oil and gas pipelines, reported Reuters.

Last year Thailand announced a power development plan with a target to have 53% of its energy capacity provided by natural gas by 2037.

PTT said it would provisionally allocate 203.5 billion baht ($6.7 billion) of spending over the next five years to enhance the group’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) value chain, gas-to-power projects and other investments aligned with the national development plan.

PTT also plans to spend another 180.8 billion baht on investments between 2020 and 2024. Of that, 68% will go on joint ventures and subsidiaries, PTT Chief Executive Chansin Treenuchagron said in a statement, with 17% devoted to pipeline infrastructure and 7% for technology and engineering.

PTT has six flagship companies including oil and gas explorer PTT Exploration and Production Pcl, electricity producer Global Power Synergy Pcl and three refineries and petrochemical companies under PTT Global Chemical Pcl, Thai Oil Pcl and IRPC Pcl .

Its retail arm, PTT Oil and Retail, which operates gas stations and coffee shops, is in the process of filing for an initial public offer.

As MRC informed before, PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) fully restarted its No. 2 cracker in Map Ta Phut last week after a planned turnaround. The company started resuming operations at the cracker by end-February, 2020. This cracker was shut for maintenance on January 20, 2020.

The company also operates No. 1 cracker at the same site with a capacity of 515,000 tonnes of ethylene and 310,000 tonnes of propylene per year, which was also shut on 23 January, 2020, for a 40-day turnaround.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

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.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Unipetrol will build a pyrolytic unit for waste-plastic processing at its plant in Litvinov. In it, it will be looking into chemical plastic recycling and the possibility of implementing it in standard production in the next three years, said the company.

"“Our ambition is to chemically recycle waste plastic not only from our nearest surroundings, but probably from the entire Czech Republic and potentially from other parts of Central and Eastern Europe within several years,” said Tomas Herink, board member of the Unipetrol Group. The costs of the PYREKOL research project, which is run by Unipetrol, the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, and the Unipetrol Centre for Research and Education, amount to CZK 71.7 million. The Technology Agency of the Czech Republic contributed CZK 50.2 million within the framework of the TREND subsidy programme. The actual pyrolytic technology investment in the amount of CZK 18 million is being arranged outside the framework of Unipetrol’s PYREKOL project, with support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade within the framework of the Enterprise and Innovations for Competitiveness programme.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade , more than 400,000 tonnes of plastic waste are produced annually in the Czech Republic. Of this amount, roughly 37% of waste plastic is used for recycling and 18% is used as energy for heat and/or electricity generation. The remaining waste plastic, approximately 45%, is neither used as energy nor recycled. Unipetrol, one of the largest manufacturers of plastic primary products in the Czech Republic, is now beginning to look into how to reuse this plastic waste.

The concept of a circular economy, in which there is minimal or no waste, applies to many industrial sectors, including the chemical industry. A circular economy can contribute to protecting the environment by introducing new methods of waste-plastic processing which will lead to lowering the volume of plastic waste and lowering the emissions caused by burning it. “We are actively looking for ways to use circular economic principles in manufacturing, and chemical recycling utilising thermal decomposition is one of them. The project’s objective is to successfully develop a functional technology for reusing waste plastic and rubber from waste tyres in the petrochemical industry, which will result in more effective utilisation of existing plastic waste and in lowering the carbon footprint,” said Tomas Herink, board member of the Unipetrol Group.

Pyrolysis, or thermal decomposition of materials at elevated temperatures, represents the most interesting waste-plastic processing technology, as it provides a high utilisation ratio of liquid products that can subsequently be additionally processed using petrochemical or, alternatively, refinery technologies. At the same time, the transition of waste plastic into a usable raw material can go hand in hand with subsequent refining that will contribute to its greater value. “The research also includes other questions that need to be resolved. These include, for instance, improving the quality of liquid and gaseous pyrolytic by-products, how to store the liquid to avoid repeat polymerisation, and how to effectively transport it over longer distances. However, we will primarily be testing various types of input materials, single-type waste plastic, and mixed types of plastic. We want to find out what impact the basic parameters of these materials have on the utilisation ratio and on the quality of the final product. We will also be looking for a safe mixing ratio of the material garnered through pyrolysis, the quality of which can be variable, in the existing production process, so that the continuity of plastic production is not compromised,” explained Jiri Hajek, director of the Unipetrol Centre for Research and Education.

The project’s output will be a comprehensive proposal of a technology on an industrial scale on the basis of pyrolysis for the processing of waste plastic and rubber from tyres whose products will be usable in the petrochemical industry for the manufacturing of basic chemicals such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene and benzene. By means of subsequent processes, they will then be used to manufacture final petrochemical products – polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, etc. In the refinery industry, pyrolytic products will be added to existing processed raw materials in order to increase the production of motor fuels, i.e. petrol and diesel fuel.

The use of output products from the pyrolysis of waste plastic will help meet the expected objectives committing plastic-product manufacturers to the mandatory use of waste materials within the EU. Restricting the production of waste plastic belongs among the main ambitions of the European Union. “In terms of planned legislative changes, the surplus of waste plastic, and insufficient recycling possibilities, our research project is fully in accordance with the EU’s policy on waste management. The legislation clearly defines that it is desirable to recycle waste plastic and to process it in the petrochemical segment, if possible. The objective is to change this material into the most valuable raw material, and in business terms, petrochemical products are more valuable than refinery ones,” said Jiri Hajek in conclusion.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russian oil companies plan to supply 177,000 tons of oil to Belarus’s Naftan refinery and 31,000 tons of oil to its Mozyr refinery in March, the Interfax news agency cited Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft as saying on Tuesday.

As MRC informed earlier, in July 2019, Belarus’s Naftan refinery has started loading clean Russian oil after a major oil contamination earlier this year. The operator said in a statement it had started cleaning part of the Druzhba pipeline between Unecha and Polotsk and that it had pumped dirty oil back to Russia from the Unecha-Polotsk-1 section of the pipeline.

In mid-May 2019, 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. 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.

According to ICIS-MRC Price report, lower capacity utilisation at Polymir (part of Naftan) in January did not affect the balance of the local low density polyethylene (LDPE) market, there was no shortage of polyethylene (PE). Local companies partially compensated for the absence of domestic PE by higher shipments from Russia.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s 225,300-barrel-per-day (bpd) Norco, Louisiana, refinery shut the coker for planned maintenance on the unit’s furnaces, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with plant operations.

Shell reduced production last week on the 25,000-bpd coker to clean out carbon that had built up in the unit’s furnaces, the sources said. Initially, the company planned to keep the coker at reduced production for the work, but decided on Monday to shut it down.

As MRC informed previously, Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island this week 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 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

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) -- At noon, three workers sustained injuries in a chlorine gas accident in the southern part of BASF, said RNF.

According to the company, the employee of an outside company had to be transported to a hospital for treatment.

The other two, who also breathed in chlorine gas, were discharged symptom-free after the initial care. It is said that a small amount of chlorine gas was released in the accident.

The cause has not yet been clarified.

Because of the general disposition to Corona about public events of the city of Ludwigshafen, BASF canceled the experience Saturday on March 14th and the planned start of the event series "On an espresso with". The visitor center at Gate 2 remains closed on this day.

As MRC wrote earlier, BASF, the world's petrochemical major, has restarted its No. 1 steam cracker following a maintenance turnaorund. Thus, the company resumed operations at the plant on September 30, 2019. The plant was shut for maintenance in mid-August, 2019. Located at Ludwigshafen in Germany, the No. 1 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 235,000 mt/year and a propylene production capacity of 125,000 mt/year.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

BASF is the leading chemical company. It produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF generated sales of around EUR63 billion in 2018.
MRC