Shandong Lihuayi Group to shut No. 1 BPA unit in China for maintenance

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shandong Lihuayi Group, has planned to take off-stream its No. 1 Bisphenol A (BPA) unit for a maintenance turnaround, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that, the company is likely to undertake a planned shutdown at the unit on April 15, 2020. The unit is likely to remain off-line for about one month.

Located in Shandong, China, the No. 1 BPA unit has a production capacity of 120,000 mt/year.

BPA is the main feedstock for the production of polycarbonate (PC).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's overall consumption of PC granules (excluding exports from Belarus) totalled 6,700 tonnes in January 2020, up by 43% year on year (4,300 tonnes a year earlier).

BPA is a type of engineering plastic for use in automobiles, mobile phones, and electronics appliances.

Lihuayi Group Co. Ltd. manufactures petrochemical products. The Company manufactures and provides diesels, gasolines, liquid petroleum gas, phthalic anhydride, and other petrochemical products. The Company also operates pharmaceutical, textiles, imports and exports businesses.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc began restarting the heavy-oil hydrocracker at its 211,270 barrel-per-day (bpd) Convent, Louisiana, refinery, reported Reuters with reference to sources familiar with plant operations.

The 45,000-bpd hydrocracker, called the H-Oil Unit, shut down on Saturday because of a malfunction, the sources said.

As MRC wrote previously, 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 383,760 tonnes in the first two month of 2020, up by 14% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased due to the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 192,760 tonnes in January-February 2020, down by 6% year on year. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main decrease in imports.

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) – G20 leaders must take collaborative action to increase access to products needed to fight COVID 19, said Americanchemistry.

The following statement may be attributed to American Chemistry Council (ACC) President and CEO, Chris Jahn, in response to the virtual G20 summit:

"U.S. chemicals manufacturers are calling for G20 leaders to increase international coordination and prioritize multilateral responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Healthcare workers and workers in essential industries around the globe are in dire need of products and equipment that can help save lives, and chemicals and plastics have been recognized for their critical role in efforts to ramp up the production and distribution of those products.

“Life-saving products belong in the hands of the heroes who are saving lives – both in the United States and around the globe. We urge G20 leaders to fortify the global supply chains that make these products possible by lifting tariffs and export restrictions and avoiding barriers to trade that will otherwise impede efforts to save lives."

As MRC informed earlier, OPEC and allies led by Russia agreed to a record cut in output to prop up oil prices amid the coronavirus pandemic in an unprecedented deal with fellow oil nations, including the United States, that could curb global oil supply by 20%. Measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus have destroyed demand for fuel and driven down oil prices, straining budgets of oil producers and hammering the U.S. shale industry, which is more vulnerable to low prices due to its higher costs.

We also remind that the COVID-19 outbreak has led Shell Chemical to temporarily suspend construction on the massive plastics and petrochemicals site it"s building in Monaca, Pa, USA.

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

According to MRC"s ScanPlast report, Russia"s estimated PE consumption totalled 383,760 tonnes in the first two month of 2020, up by 14% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased due to the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 192,760 tonnes in January-February 2020, down by 6% year on year. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main decrease in imports.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Asian refining margins for 10 ppm gasoil dropped, as demand for the industrial and transportation fuel remained under pressure due to lockdowns across the region to contain the coronavirus pandemic, reported Reuters.

Refining profit margins, also known as cracks, for gasoil with 10 ppm sulphur content plunged to USD6.59 a barrel over Dubai crude during Asian trading hours on Monday, down from USD8.48 per barrel on Thursday.

The gasoil cracks had held their ground even a couple of weeks ago when jet fuel and gasoline margins turned negative, taking a hit from the virus outbreak, but traders said the overall industrial demand for gasoil or diesel has been fast waning.

Cracks for the benchmark gasoil grade in Singapore have shed over 48% since March 30, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

"The recent weakness that has come into the diesel market is showing us that run cuts thus far have potentially not been severe enough, and the situation is made worse by India joining the lockdowns in the region," Kostantsa Rangelova, lead Asia analyst at JBC Energy said.

"India's personal travel has much more diesel demand than other countries in the region, meaning demand there is likely to fall relatively more than elsewhere, with refiners looking to push a higher share of their diesel output into the regional market where possible."

Indian refiners are likely to continue prompt export of refined fuels to avoid a complete shutdown after the coronavirus lockdown hit local demand, company officials said.

Cash discounts for 10 ppm gasoil GO10-SIN-DIF widened to USD1.99 per barrel to Singapore quotes on Thursday, a fresh low since Singapore's benchmark was shifted to 10ppm gasoil in January 2018, from 500ppm earlier. They were at a discount of USD1.67 a barrel on Thursday.

Meanwhile, cash discounts for jet fuel JET-SIN-DIF narrowed to USD2.97 per barrel to Singapore quotes on Monday. The jet cash differentials were at a discount of USD3.22 per barrel on Thursday, a level not seen since August 2008.

Refining margins for jet fuel in Singapore weakened on Monday to USD2.46 a barrel below Dubai crude on Monday, compared with minus USD1.02 per barrel in the last trading session on Thursday.

India's fuel demand slid 17.8% in March compared with the same month last year, data from the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) of the oil ministry showed on Monday.

Consumption of fuel, a proxy for oil demand, totalled 16.08 million tons, the data showed.

Consumption of diesel, which is widely used for transportation as well as for irrigation needs in India, was down about 24% in March year-over-year at 5.65 million tons.

India's domestic consumption pattern typically impacts the volume of the country's exports, which in turn affects the overall supply in the wider Asian markets.

Domestic jet fuel sales in March were at about 480,000 tons, compared with 690,000 tons in February, and 720,000 tons in March 2019.

Asia Pacific oil refineries are finding that processing cuts are not keeping pace with sharp drops in fuel margins, which hit record lows this month, caused by the demand decline from the economic dislocations of the coronavirus outbreak.

Analysts at Wood Mackenzie, JBC Energy, Energy Aspects, Rystad Energy, IHS Markit and FGE estimate that Asian refineries will cut their processing by between 2 million to 4 million barrels per day (bpd) in April. For the whole of the second quarter, the cuts will average between 2 million to 2.7 million bpd, the analysts said.

As MRC informed before, India’s state oil refiners have reduced crude processing as local fuel demand has tumbled due to lockdowns in much of the country that are aimed at halting the spread of coronavirus.

We also remind that 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.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 383,760 tonnes in the first two month of 2020, up by 14% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased due to the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 192,760 tonnes in January-February 2020, down by 6% year on year. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main decrease in imports.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Global oil producers and refiners are struggling with a series of unprecedented dislocations as the simultaneous epidemic and volume war between Saudi Arabia and Russia rip through every element of the supply chain, said Reuters.

Some idea of the extraordinary speed and scale of the disruptions was evident in the “Weekly Petroleum Status Report” published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Wednesday.

The United States is the world’s largest oil consumer and producer, though it is not entirely representative of the whole global market.

But its weekly oil data have an outsized influence because they provide the fastest and most readily available statistics on the changing production-consumption balance.

The latest weekly report reveals an industry in crisis – unable to cope with the simultaneous collapse in fuel consumption and rise in crude production.

Inventories are increasing an unsustainable rate that will soon fill up all available storage space in onshore tank farms as well as tankers moored off the coast.

As MRC reported earlier, South Africa’s largest refinery SAPREF will “minimize” maintenance to critical activities, a spokeswoman said, as a national lockdown looms to contain the spread of coronavirus. SAPREF, situated near Durban along the east coast, is a 50/50 joint venture between BP and Shell with a refining capacity of around 8.5 million tons a year. It accounts for 35% of the refining capacity in Africa’s most advanced economy, which is a net importer of petroleum products.

We also remind that the COVID-19 outbreak has led Shell Chemical to temporarily suspend construction on the massive plastics and petrochemicals site it's building in Monaca, Pa, USA.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 383,760 tonnes in the first two month of 2020, up by 14% year on year. High density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased due to the increased capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 192,760 tonnes in January-February 2020, down by 6% year on year. Homopolymer PP accounted for the main decrease in imports.
MRC