MOSCOW (MRC) -- German chemicals maker BASF said on Thursday it had put a project to build a petrochemicals complex in India worth up to USD4 billion on hold due to the economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Reuters.
BASF signed a memorandum of understanding with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Adani Group and Borealis AG in October 2019 to evaluate a collaboration to build the chemical site in Mundra, in India’s Gujarat state.
“The global economic uncertainties caused by the pandemic have led the partners to review the timing for undertaking this investment,” BASF said in a statement. “Despite all attempts to optimize the scope and the configuration, the project has been put on hold."
Under the plan, the partners wanted to build a plant to produce propylene from propane gas to be supplied by ADNOC. It would have been the first plant in the world to be fully powered by renewable energy and BASF’s biggest investment so far in India.
BASF said the partners remained convinced that India was a good place to invest and had agreed to periodically explore market conditions and discuss any opportunity that might arise over time.
As MRC informed earlier, BASF is planning to restart its 300,000-metric ton/year toluene diisocyanate (TDI) plant in Ludwigshafen, Germany, by the end of October. The company declared force majeure on 31 August after experiencing technical problems.
We remind that Russia's output of chemical products rose in September 2020 by 6.7% year on year. At the same time, production of basic chemicals increased by 6.1% year on year in the first nine months of 2020, according to Rosstat's data. According to the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation, polymers in primary form accounted for the greatest increase in the January-September output. Last month's production of primary polymers decreased to 852,000 tonnes from 888,000 tonnes in August due to shutdowns in Tomsk, Ufa and Kazan. Overall output of polymers in primary form totalled 7,480,000 tonnes over the stated period, up by 16.4% year on year.
BASF-YPC Company Limited (BASF-YPC) is a 50-50 joint venture between BASF and Sinopec, founded in 2000, with a total investment of approximately USD5.5 billion. The integrated petrochemical site produces about three million tons of high-quality chemicals and polymers for the Chinese market annually. The products serve the rapid-growing demand in multiple industries, including agriculture, construction, electronics, pharmaceutical, hygiene, automotive and chemical manufacturing. All BASF-YPC plants are interconnected in order to use products, by-products and energy in the most efficient way, to save cost and to minimize the environmental impact. BASF-YPC posted sales of approximately CNY 19.6 billion in 2019 and employed 1,942 people as of the end of the year.
MRC