Russia to supply 208,000 T of oil to Belarus refineries in March

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

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Inner Mongolia Yigao Coal Chemical Technology Co Ltd, has brought on-stream its monoethylene glycol (MEG) unit last week, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that, the company resumed operations at the unit on March 3, 2020. The unit was shut on February 4, 2020 owing to transportation disruption caused by outbreak of coronavirus in wuhan region.

Located In Ordos, Inner mongolia China, the unit has a production capacity is 120,000 mt/year.

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).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Losing more than a quarter of their value, oil prices were set for their biggest daily rout since the first Gulf War, after Saudi Arabia cut its official prices in a market already reeling from the impact of the coronavirus on global demand, reported Reuters.

Saudi Arabia slashed its official selling prices and made plans to ramp up crude output next month after Russia balked at making a further steep output cut proposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to stabilize oil markets.

Brent LCOc1 crude futures were down USD11.38, or 25%, at USD33.89 a barrel by 0732 GMT, after earlier dropping to USD31.02, their lowest since Feb. 12, 2016. Brent futures were on track for their biggest daily decline since Jan. 17, 1991, when prices dropped at the start of the first Gulf War.

US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude CLc1 fell by USD11.12, or 27%, to USD30.16 a barrel, after touching USD27.34, also the lowest since Feb. 12, 2016. The US benchmark was potentially heading for its biggest decline on record, surpassing a 33% fall in January 1991.

"The timing of this lower price environment should be limited to a few months unless this whole virus impact on global market and consumer confidence triggers the next recession," said Keith Barnett, senior vice president strategic analysis at ARM Energy in Houston.

The disintegration of the grouping called OPEC+ - made up of OPEC plus other producers including Russia - ends more than three years of cooperation to support the market.

Saudi Arabia plans to boost its crude output above 10 million barrels per day (bpd) in April after the current deal to curb production expires at the end of March, two sources told Reuters on Sunday.

The world’s biggest oil exporter is attempting to punish Russia, the world’s second-largest producer, for not supporting the production cuts proposed last week by OPEC.

Saudi Arabia, Russia and other major producers last battled for market share like this between 2014 and 2016 to try to squeeze out production from the United States, which has grown to become the world’s biggest oil producer as flows from shale oil fields doubled over the last decade.

"The deal was always destined to fail," said Matt Stanley, senior broker at Starfuels in Dubai.

"All that happened was, and all that has consistently happened since the inception of the cuts, has been that US shale producers have gained market share."

Saudi Arabia over the weekend cut its official selling prices for April for all crude grades to all destinations by between USD6 and USD8 a barrel.

"The prognosis for the oil market is even more dire than in November 2014, when such a price war last started, as it comes to a head with the signi?cant collapse in oil demand due to the coronavirus," Goldman Sachs said.

Meanwhile, China’s efforts to curtail the coronavirus outbreak has disrupted the world’s second-largest economy and curtailed shipments to the biggest oil importer.

And the spread of the virus to other major economies such as Italy and South Korea and the growing number of cases in the United States have increased concerns that oil demand will slump this year.

Goldman Sachs and other major banks such as Morgan Stanley have cut their demand growth forecasts, with Morgan Stanley predicting China will have zero demand growth in 2020. Goldman sees a contraction of 150,000 bpd in global demand.

Goldman Sachs cut its forecast for Brent to USD30 for the second and third quarters of 2020.

In other markets, the dollar was down sharply against the yen, Asian stock markets sharply lower, and gold rose to its highest since 2013 as investors fled to safe havens.

We remind that, as MRC informed earlier, state-owned PetroChina shut its Guangxi Petrochemical in southern Guangxi province on February 9, 2020, for scheduled 50-day maintenance. The maintenance should help the refinery to offset stock pressure after product demand slumped due to the coronavirus outbreak.

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