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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. |
