PetroChina resumes Guangdong refinery construction after extended holiday

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Asia's largest oil and gas firm PetroChina resumed construction of its oil refinery and petrochemical project in southern Chinese province of Guangdong, as the number of new coronavirus cases fell for a second straight day, reported Reuters.

In an attempt to curb the spread of the virus, China had extended Lunar New Year holidays and asked companies to put workers returning from their hometown into a 14-day quarantine.

With workers and machineries gradually in place, the USD10 billion refinery project in Jieyang city is expected to fully restart construction by end-February, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The project is scheduled to be fully completed by June 2022, with the launch of an oil refining section by end-2021 and chemical section in March 2022.

The new coronavirus has caused 2,004 deaths in China and infected more than 74,000 people, while measures to contain it have paralysed the economy and the supply chains it feeds.

As MRC wrote previously, Sichuan Petrochemical (part of PetroChina) undertook an emergency shutdown at its naphtha cracker in Sichuan province of China on July 11, 2018 owing to a gas leak at its natural gas supply pipeline. Further details on duration of the outage could not be ascertained. Located at Sichuan province of China, the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 800,000 mt/year.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,724,670 tonnes in the first ten months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market in January-October 2019 totalled 1,066,520 tonnes, up by 7% year on year. Supply of block copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymer) and homopolymer of propylene (homopolymer PP) increased, demand for statistical copolymers (PP random copolymer) decreased.

PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A catalytic reformer was shut on Sunday night at Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s 211,270-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery in Convent, Louisiana, after a brief fire, reported Rueters with reference to sources familiar with plant operations.

The reformer has the capacity to process 40,000 bpd of feedstock, according to Refinitiv Eikon.

Shell spokesman Ray Fisher said the fire was quickly extinguished and there were no injuries.

Fisher also said Shell is investigating the cause of the fire.

He declined to discuss the status of individual units at the refinery, but said, "We will bring our units back on line only when it is safe to do so."

As MRC wrote before, Royal Dutch Shell Plc restarted the hydrocracker at its 225,300 barrel-per-day (bpd) Norco, Louisiana, refinery in mid-October 2019. 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.

We also remind that operations were stable on 13 September 2019 at Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s 340,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) joint-venture refinery in Deer Park, Texas, after the upper Houston Ship Channel was closed by protesters from Greenpeace USA. The Deer Park refinery is a 50-50 joint-venture between Shell and Mexico’s national oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Shell is the managing partner of the joint-venture. Shell has three crackers at Deer Park site with a combined ethylene capacity of 1,67 mln per year and petrochemical plants.

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) -- Phillips 66 took the gasoline-making FCCU at its Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey, offline at midnight EST last Thursday due to a leak, reported S&P Global with reference to a source familiar to refinery operations.

There was no timeline for the restart.

As MRC wrote before, US-based Phillips 66 remains open to developing another ethane cracker for its Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) joint venture, the refiner's CEO said in March 2018.

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) -- Following the start-up at the newly constructed polypopylene (PP) plant in Vietnam on 12 February 2020, it is reported that Hyosung has reached on-spec cargoes this week, reported CommoPlast.

The first prime grade parcels are homo-PP yarn grade F501N with a melt index of 3.7.

"We are targeting local buyers in Vietnam first before obtaining Form D from the government to export," a source close to the producer reported.

This is the No. 1 PP unit that has an annual capacity of 300,000 tons/year, operating using external sources of propylene. The company is constructing the Phase II project at the same location, which houses a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) plant and No. 2 PP unit that could produce another 300,000 tons/year.

As MRC informed earlier, Hyosung Corp. plans to invest USD1.2-billion in a two-phase project, which involves construction of PP plants and LPG warehouse at the Cai Mep Industrial Zone in Vietnam.

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).

Hyosung Corporation is a Korean industrial conglomerate, founded in 1957. It operates in various fields, including the chemical industry, industrial machinery, IT, trade, and construction.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- One of Texas’ oil and gas regulators defended the state’s high rate of natural gas flaring, but named companies that burn off the most gas and said he would hold public meetings on the controversial practice, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Flaring, or deliberately burning gas produced alongside oil, has surged with crude production in Texas, but can worsen climate change by releasing carbon dioxide. The report includes a set of flaring and venting data to be updated quarterly, the first set of such data the state has released.

Ryan Sitton, one of three elected oil and gas regulators, said Texas’ flaring intensity is lower than other oil-producing areas, including North Dakota, Iran, Iraq and Russia. Its flare volumes - around 650,000 thousand cubic feet per day (Mcf/d) in 2018 - are “high for recent history” but do not surpass some years in the 1950s, according to Sitton’s report. "The state as a whole is still well below historical levels and most of the rest of the world," Sitton said in the report.

EP Energy, Endeavor Energy Resources, Surge Operating and Jagged Peak Energy had the state’s highest rates of “flaring intensity," a measurement of flaring volume against oil production, according to the report. The companies could not be reached immediately for comment, but Jagged Peak was recently purchased by Parsley Energy, whose chief executive has criticized Jagged Peak’s high flaring rates.

Companies with the lowest flaring intensity in Texas included Pioneer Natural Resources, EOG Resources , ConocoPhillips and Chesapeake Energy Corp.

Oil drillers tend to flare or vent gas when they lack pipelines to move it to market, or prices are too low to make transporting it worthwhile. Venting releases unburned methane, which is many times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Texas regularly allows companies to burn or vent gas in excess of regulations. It has issued more than 35,000 flaring permits since 2013 and has not denied any, according to the state commission.

"Neither companies nor regulators have kept up with this challenge," said Colin Leyden, a policy advocate for the Environmental Defense Fund, which tracks flaring, adding “pointing fingers at Iran and Iraq does nothing to fix the problem."

In the Permian Basin underlying Texas and New Mexico, the largest U.S. shale basin, flaring and venting totaled about 293.2 billion cubic feet last year, according to state regulatory data compiled by independent energy researcher Rystad – up about 7% from 2018.

As MRC informed earlier, U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips has seized products belonging to Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA from the Isla refinery it runs on Curacao. Conoco has won court orders allowing it to seize PDVSA assets on Caribbean islands, including Curacao, in efforts to collect on a USD2 billion arbitral award linked to the 2007 nationalization of Conoco assets under late leader Hugo Chavez.

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