MOSCOW (MRC) -- In 2020, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the U. energy sector could be 11% lower than in 2019, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to US Energy Information Administration (EIA) data through August and EIA estimates for September through December.
According to values published in EIA’s December Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA expects CO2 emissions in 2020 to fall by 19% for coal, by 13% for petroleum, and by 2% for natural gas. Many of this year’s changes in energy-related CO2 emissions are attributable to the economic and behavioral effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on energy consumption.
EIA calculates energy-related CO2 emissions by multiplying energy consumption, measured in British thermal units, by the carbon factor associated with each energy source. For this reason, changes in emissions reflect both changes in the overall amount of energy consumed and the mix of energy sources used.
This year, US energy consumption was heavily affected by responses to COVID-19, including working from home and other stay-at-home measures, closed or limited operating hours for several types of businesses, and travel restrictions. In April, when many parts of the country instituted measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, monthly US energy consumption fell to a 30-year low and emissions fell to a record low.
Petroleum accounted for an estimated 45% of US energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020, and most of those emissions were from the transportation sector. CO2 emissions from petroleum in the transportation sector fell to 102 million metric tons in April 2020, the lowest monthly level since February 1983.
Natural gas, which accounted for an estimated 36% of US energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020, is consumed in several sectors. The electric power sector consumes the most natural gas of any sector, and EIA estimates that in 2020, although electricity consumption declined slightly, the use of natural gas to generate electricity increased.
Coal CO2 emissions this year could reach the lowest annual level (4,597 million metric tons, or 19% of the total) in EIA’s annual emissions series that dates back to 1973. In the electric power sector, where most coal is consumed in the United States, coal has lost market share to natural gas and renewables since peaking in 2007.
As MRC informed before, slumping fuel consumption during the pandemic is accelerating the long-term shift of refining capacity from North America and Europe to Asia, and from older, smaller refineries to modern, higher-capacity mega-refineries. The result is a wave of closures, often centering on refineries that only narrowly survived the previous closure wave in the years after the recession in 2008/09.
We remind that PetroChina has nearly doubled the amount of Russian crude being processed at its refinery in Dalian, the company's biggest, since January 2018, as a new supply agreement had come into effect. The Dalian Petrochemical Corp, located in the northeast port city of Dalian, was expected to process 13 million tonnes, or 260,000 bpd of Russian pipeline crude in 2018, up by about 85 to 90 percent from the previous year's level. Dalian has the capacity to process about 410,000 bpd of crude. The increase follows an agreement worked out between the Russian and Chinese governments under which Russia's top oil producer Rosneft was to supply 30 million tonnes of ESPO Blend crude to PetroChina in 2018, or about 600,000 bpd. That would have represented an increase of 50 percent over 2017 volumes.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,760,950 tonnes in th first ten months of 2020, up by 3% year on year. Only high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 978,870 tonnes in January-October 2020 (calculated using the formula: production minus exports plus imports minus producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively of PP random copolymer increased.
MRC