Flaring at Shell Moerdijk complex due to unit failure

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Flaring at Shell's Moerdijk petrochemical complex near Rotterdam on Wednesday has sparked rumors in the European aromatics market that one or both of the two propylene oxide/styrene monomer (POSM) units situated there have been impacted, reported Chemweek with reference to OPIS.

Shell said in a statement on Friday: "Shell Moerdijk is flaring due to a factory failure. We have identified the cause of the failure, allowing us to restart the factory. The full restart takes a few days, with the flaring gradually decreasing."

A Shell spokesperson declined to specify which unit or units were impacted, when asked by OPIS.

Moerdijk is one of the biggest petrochemical complexes in Europe with an ethylene capacity of 940,000 metric tons/year.

Feedstock supply and other petchems output at the plant are not yet noted to have been impacted by the events around the flaring.

Market speculation revolved around the potential restart date. One source said it "seems the unit is expected to restart this weekend (15-16 August)," and another placed the restart in about one week and a third source suggested that it could be as long as two weeks.

In April, OPIS reported that heavy maintenance is scheduled for parts of the Moerdijk complex this fall, having been delayed from its original May start date. The work will occur at the same time as maintenance at Shell's 300,000-metric tons/year Wesseling, Germany, steam cracker.

OPIS is an IHS Markit company.

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

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase 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.
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1. Indorama Ventures Q2 net profit plunged 93%

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indorama Ventures PCL's second-quarter net profit plunged 93% from a year earlier as some of its businesses were hit by Covid-19 restrictions, according to MarketScreener. Net profit was 153.51 million baht ($4.9 million), sharply lower from THB2.27 billion a year ago, the Thai petrochemical-products company said Thursday. Revenue fell 21% to THB75.01 billion, as its integrated oxides and derivatives business took a hit due to a drop in crude oil prices and falling demand for its products.


MOSCOW (MRC) -- Crude oil futures were marginally higher in mid-morning Asian trade Aug. 7 as optimism over a better-than-expected US jobs report and pledged compensation cuts by Iraq buoyed the market despite the growing COVID-19 case counts worldwide, reported S&P Global. At 10:25 am Singapore time (0225 GMT), the ICE Brent October crude futures was up 6 cents/b (0.09%) from the August 6 settle at USD45.15/b, while NYMEX September light sweet crude contract was up by 4 cents/b (0.1%) at USD41.99/b.


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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indorama Ventures expects repairs to its 440,000 mt/year Louisiana cracker could take several months, reported S&P Global with reference to the company's statement August 13 in its second-quarter 2020 earnings release.

"Unfortunately we recently had a lightning strike in recently started Lake Charles, which might take a few months to recover," the company said. "Damage assessment is being done" and is covered by insurance, including profit losses.
Indorama said it does not anticipate any impact on downstream production as spot ethylene "is covered to ensure uninterrupted feedstock supply."

Lightning struck the cracker Aug. 2, prompting its shutdown. Indorama initially started up the revamped cracker in May 2019, but shut it down several months later for repairs and technical improvements after repeated flaring. The company restarted it in December, and it reached commercial production in February.

As MRC wrote earlier, the world's largest polyethylene terephthalate (PET) producer also reported a a net profit of Baht 154 million (USD4.9 million) for the quarter, a 93% decline from Baht 2.267 billion (USD72.78 million) in the year-ago period.

Indorama saw strong demand in the quarter for PET resin used to make plastic bottles as well as hygiene fibers, such as those used to make diapers. However, the company's oxides and derivatives segment was hurt by low oil prices squeezing margins for ethylene glycol, a precursor to PET, and gasoline octane booster methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE).

In addition, fibers used in non-hygiene industries, such as apparel and automotive, also were "severely impacted" because of widespread coronavirus outbreak-related shutdowns, less spending on durable goods and travel restrictions.

"Our portfolio serving end markets of food, beverages, personal care and hygiene were positively influenced during the pandemic," the company said. "We are also pleasantly surprised that our material which goes into electronics and screens was steady. The automotive- and oil-related segments saw severe drops in offtake and for the first time we saw the shutdown of the retail segment, which impacted our apparel demand."

Indorama also said that as shutdowns eased and crude prices rose later in the quarter and into the third quarter, "we expect to see improved performance of the laggards" in Q2.

Indorama owns a third of a major PET and upstream purified terephthalic acid (PTA) complex under construction near Corpus Christi, Texas. In March, Indorama and its partners, Mexico's Alpek and Taiwan's Far Eastern New Century, suspended spending on the project through the rest of 2020 because labor costs on the US Gulf Coast had exceeded previous budget estimates.

The three partners collectively bought the project out of M&G Chemicals' bankruptcy for USD1.25 billion in cash and capital contributions in 2018. M&G had stopped work on the complex in October 2017, and the new owners did not resume that work until early 2019, after receiving approval for the acquisition from the US Federal Trade Commission in late 2018.

The 1.1 million mt/year PET plant was originally slated to come online in mid to late 2020, followed by the 1.3 million mt/year PTA plant a year later. In November 2019, the companies decided to delay those startups by a year, and in March pushed that delay back further to 2023.

The units will be the world's largest PET facilities when they come online.

Indorama on Aug. 12 also noted that the company remains committed to increasing its recycled PET capacity of 750,000 mt/year by 2025 to meet customer demand. The company announced Aug. 4 it had agreed to buy IMP Polowat, a PET recycling facility in Poland, with capacity to produce 23,000 mt/year of PET flakes and 4,000 mt/year of recycled PET pellets. The deal, for which terms were not disclosed, is slated to close in the third quarter.

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

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.

Indorama Ventures Public Company Limited, listed in Thailand, is one of the world's leading petrochemicals producers, a global manufacturing footprint with 59 sites in 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. The company's portfolio is comprises necessities and high value-added (HVA) categories of polymers, fibers, and packaging. Indorama Ventures has approx. 24,000 employees worldwide and consolidated revenue of USD 11.4 billion in 2019.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indorama Ventures (IVL) has announced it has recently recycled 50-billion polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles since 2011, and has committed up to USD1.5-billion to expand its recycling business with the aim of recycling 50-billion PET bottles a year by 2025, according to Apic-online.

IVL recently entered into an agreement with Coca-Cola to form a new joint venture that will build a greenfield integrated recycling plant near Manila in the Philippines.

The facility will be able to process approximately 30,000 t/y of PET bottles and have an output of 16,000 t/y of recycled PET resin. The plant is expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

The new joint venture company, PETValue Philippines Corp., will be owned 70% by Indorama Ventures Packaging (Philippines) Corp., an indirect subsidiary of IVL, and 30% by Coca-Cola Philippines.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PET consumption totalled 367,720 tonnes in the first six months of 2020, up by 19% year on year. Russian companies processed 62,910 tonnes of material in June.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hexion (Columbus, Ohio) says it will collaborate with D&R Dispersions and Resins (Wloclawek, Poland) on commercial production of isocyanates-free resins for paint and coatings producers using Hexion’s patented vinyl silane monomer coating technology, said Chemweek.

The collaboration through Hexion’s versatic acids and derivatives group “offers strategic manufacturing capabilities in Eastern Europe to meet the resin production needs for specialty applications,” it says. Hexion will supply the monomer for the venture with D&R.

"We are continuously exploring alternative monomeric raw materials and technologies; this collaboration allows us to create truly innovative and sustainable binder solutions for the coatings industry,” says Arkadiusz Kowalczyk, vice president at D&R, which specializes in the production of alkyd and acrylic resins used to make wood and metal paint.

As MRC informed earlier, Hexion, a major American manufacturer of phenol and bisphenol A (BPA), plans to close its BPA plant in Pernis (Pernis, The Netherlands) in early October for scheduled maintenance. This 120 ktpa BPA production facility will be closed in the second week of October and is expected to resume production in three weeks.

Phenol is the main raw material for bisphenol A (BPA) production, which in turn is used to produce polycarbonate (PC).

According to MRC's ScanPlast, in Russia, following the results of the first two quarters, the total estimated consumption of PC granulate in the Russian Federation (excluding imports and exports to Belarus) amounted to 47.3 thousand tonnes against 40.7 thousand tonnes in 2019. Total demand increased by 16%.

Hexion Inc., formerly Momentive Specialty Chemicals Inc., is a chemical company based in Columbus, Ohio. It manufactures thermosetting resins and related technologies and specialty products. Hexion has two divisions: the epoxy, phenolic and coating resins division and the forest products division.
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