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MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Province of Alberta,
Canada, today announced the Alberta Petrochemicals Incentive Program (PIP), a
10-year, grant-based initiative to attract petrochemical investment, said Chemweek.
Details
are still being worked out, and the official launch is scheduled for fall. The
new program is significantly different from the Petrochemical Diversification
Program, which invited project proposals to compete for feedstock royalty
credits. Instead, every project that meets the PIP’s criteria will receive
funding if built and operational within 10 years.
"Compared to previous
government petrochemical programs, the Alberta Petrochemicals Incentive Program
will cut red tape and increase certainty and flexibility for investors,
attracting more financial investment into Alberta’s petrochemicals sector," says
a government statement.
Grants allow companies to better account for the
full value of the incentive when calculating a project’s return on investment,
the statement notes. Additionally, the grants will not be subject to a private
evaluation by the government, and the 10-year window will allow projects to
align with typical business investment cycles.
As MRC informed before,
global oil consumption cut by up to a third in Q1 2020. What happens next in the
oil market depends on how quickly and completely the global economy emerges from
lockdown, and whether the recessionary hit lingers through the rest of this year
and into 2021.
Earlier this year, BP said the deadly
coronavirus outbreak could cut global oil demand growth by 40 per cent in 2020,
putting pressure on Opec producers and Russia to curb supplies to keep prices in
check.
We remind that in
September 2019, six world's major petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium,
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region)
announced the creation of a consortium to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas
steam crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil
fuels. The Cracker of the Future consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP,
LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total, aims to produce base chemicals while also
significantly reducing carbon emissions. The companies agreed to invest in
R&D and knowledge sharing as they assess the possibility of transitioning
their base chemical production to renewable electricity.
Ethylene and
propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene
(PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 595,170 tonnes in the first five
month of 2020, up by 10% year on year. Deliveries of all ethylene polymers,
except for linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), rose partially because of an
increase in capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP
shipments to the Russian market was 457,930 tonnes in January-May 2020
(calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Deliveris of
exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
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