US gasoline prices rise as fire, outages hit six refineries

MOSCOW (MRC) -- US gasoline prices on Tuesday continued a week-long climb as unplanned weekend refinery outages compounded earlier shutdowns at major US Gulf Coast and East Coast plants, reported Reuters with reference to gasoline traders.

Over the weekend, four refineries in Texas and Louisiana shut units directly making gasoline or portions of it, according to refinery sources and energy industry intelligence service Genscape.

Those new outages are expected to tighten US gasoline supply as refineries prepare for planned shutdowns that typically begin in spring and prepare the plants for summer driving-season production.

The average retail price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline was USD2.45, up from USD2.33 a year ago, according to petroleum analytics firm Gas Buddy. Prices have been falling this year as inventories rose and crude oil prices slumped.

On Tuesday, unleaded gasoline futures rose 1.47%, or 2.30 cents, to USD1.6066 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The futures are up nearly 7% since Feb. 12, when a major fire shut most of Exxon Mobil Corp’s Baton Rouge, Louisiana, refinery, the fifth-largest in the United States.

Exxon aims to restore production at three shut crude distillation units (CDUs) as quickly as possible and raise production on a fourth, which is operating at a minimal level, said sources familiar with operations. CDUs convert crude oil into feedstock for all other production units.

An Exxon spokesman said operations continue but declined to comment on the status of individual units.

That outage accounted for most of the increase in gasoline prices while adding to the market impact of the Feb. 7 shutdown of the gasoline-producing unit at Phillips 66’s Bayway Refinery in Linden, New Jersey, the largest on the East Coast. Repairs there are expected to last until early to mid-March, according to sources familiar with plant operations.

A company spokesman said planned maintenance was underway.

Over the three-day Presidents Day holiday weekend, the gasoline-producing units at Houston-area refineries operated by LyondellBasell Industries and Chevron Corp were shut, according to refinery sources and Genscape.

Restart timelines for those units were not available from sources or the companies. Neither Chevron nor Lyondell replied to requests for comment.

Reformers, which produce octane-boosting components mixed into gasoline, also were shut at Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s Convent, Louisiana, refinery and Marathon Petroleum Corp’s Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas, over the weekend. Shell declined to comment on the unit’s status. Marathon was not immediately available to comment.

Restart timelines were also unavailable for those units.

We remind that, 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 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).
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Xuzhou Haitian, has restarted its polypropylene (PP) plant, following an unplanned maintenance, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that, the company has resumed operations at the plant on February 17, 2020. The plant was shut in early-February, 2020.

Located at Xuzhou, in Jiangsu province of China, the plant has a production capacity of 200,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote previously, Xuzhou Haitian last took off-stream its PP plant for a maintenance turnaround on August 5, 2018. The plant remained off-stream for around one week. Located at Xuzhou in Jiangsu province of China, the plant has a production capacity of 200,000 mt/year.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, 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) -- Royal Dutch Shell reported flaring at its 404,000 barrel per day (bpd) Pernis oil refinery in the Netherlands due to failure on a part of an unspecified unit, reported Reuters.

The alert on the refinery’s official Twitter account did not specify the unit involved.

Industry monitor Genscape reported decreased unit heating at a part of the 56,300 bpd hydrocracker early on Wednesday.

The refinery, near Rotterdam, is Europe’s largest.

As MRC informed before, a contractor working at Shell's Pulau Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore has contracted the new coronavirus. The Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore houses Shell's biggest wholly-owned refinery. The company said earlier it had sent some staff home from its main office at Metropolis in western Singapore after discovering another employee had been in contact with a carrier.

We also remind that 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 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) -- Packaging specialist Amcor Ltd. has joined the Healthcare Packaging Recycling Council (HPRC), a coalition of industry peers across health care, recycling and waste management, seeking to improve recycling of plastic products within health care, said Plasticsnews.

The company will contribute its extensive expertise in packaging design for medical devices and applications in hospitals and other treatment settings.

While the potential for recycling medical device packaging is huge, various obstacles, including current packaging designs and the practical considerations of recycling segregation systems, are standing in the way of implementation, the group says. Yet as sustainability requirements for packaging increase, the health care industry will have to find solutions in order to take advantage of this waste stream, while continuing to ensure product protection and patient safety.

According to Amcor, the health care industry poses a "unique" recycling opportunity. The company, with its global experience in developing more easily recyclable packaging, shares HPRC’s vision of improving recycling rates of healthcare plastics, commented David Clark, vice president sustainability, Amcor.

In January 2018, Melbourne, Australia-based Amcor became the first global packaging company pledging to develop all its packaging to be recyclable or reusable by 2025. Close collaboration with organizations like HPRC, as well as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and A Circular Economy for Flexible Packaging (CEFLEX), helps to achieve that goal and increase the rates of recycling across all industries to advance a circular economy.

As per MRC's ScanPlast report, the estimated consumption of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in Russia decreased by 16% year on year in December 2019. Russia's overall estimated PET consumption totalled 696,810 tonnes in 2019, up by 1% year on year (690,130 tonnes in 2018).

Amcor Limited is an Australian-based multinational packaging company. It operates manufacturing plants in 42 countries. It is the world's largest manufacturer of plastic bottles.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF and Fabbri Group have developed a sustainable solution for cling film used in fresh-food packaging: Based on BASF’s certified compostable ecovio®, Fabbri Group produces the highly transparent stretch film Nature Fresh, said the company.

Meat, seafood as well as fruit and vegetables can be wrapped manually or with automatic packaging equipment. Industrial stretch packaging is also possible. It is the first certified compostable cling film that combines optimal breathability for an extended shelf life of fresh food with high transparency and excellent mechanical properties for automatic packaging. Nature Fresh is food-contact approved according to US and European standards.

With this property profile, the film helps to keep food fresh for a longer period of time when compared to polyvinyl chloride (PVC) alternatives used for cling film such as polyethylene (PE). As a consequence, the greenhouse gas emissions originating from food that is produced and distributed - but ultimately wasted - can be reduced. After usage Nature Fresh can be composted together with any food waste in home compost or industrial compost according to national legislation. It thus enables organic recycling and helps closing the nutrient loop towards a Circular Economy.

Cling or stretch film is a flexible thin film that is predominately used for packaging and applied in a stretch-wrap process. Wrapping can be done manually or by machines. The Nature Fresh film made of ecovio® is the certified compostable alternative to cling films made of PVC and PE so far used in fresh food packaging: Its overall performance - mechanical properties like tensile strength and elongation at break, breathability, film transparency and aesthetics like elastic recovery and anti-fogging - is comparable to films made of PVC. At the same time ecovio® shows a better water vapor transmission than PE, which is essential for optimal fresh food packaging.

In order to find the perfect match of a sustainable material with excellent packaging properties and easy wrapping, BASF and Fabbri Group joined to develop a cling film which can also be efficiently used on stretch wrapping machines. Stefano Mele, CEO at Fabbri Group: “The Fabbri new way to sustainability is combining our Nature Fresh solution with our new Automac NF wrappers so that the food packaging industry can benefit twice: from an innovative cling film and easy film processing. In this way our certified compostable cling film can be used together with trays and labels of the same kind in order to have a complete compostable packaging.” Fabbri Group offers Nature Fresh in four different formats: as rolls for manual or automatic packaging machines in industrial food packaging, for cutter boxes in hotels, restaurants and catering services, as jumbo rolls for converters as well as rolls for end consumer hand-wrapping applications.

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 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.

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.
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