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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Trinidad and Tobago
will return to the open market to seek a buyer for its oil refinery that ceased
operations two years ago after rejecting a proposal from a local group, Finance
minister Colm Imbert said, said Reuters.
Imbert
said Patriotic Energies, a subsidiary of a trade union which represents oil
workers, could not provide any credible offer of financing for the Petrotrin oil
refinery. The government decided to “return to the open market to see if there
is anybody else interested in the plant…and explore all options for the
utilization of the refinery", he said.
The government shut down the
state-run Petrotrin and ceased operations two years ago at its only refinery,
which then had the capacity to process about 140,000 barrels per day of crude,
to curtail losses of over USD1 billion in the previous five years.
The
government said Petrotrin required a cash injection of USD4 billion to remain in
operation, upgrade its infrastructure and repay the nearly USD2 billion in debt
it had racked up.
As MRC informed
previously, oil producers face an unprecedented challenge to balance supply
and demand as factors including the pace and response to COVID-19 vaccines cloud
the outlook, according to an official with International Energy Agency's (IEA)
statement.
We remind that the
COVID-19 outbreak has led to an unprecedented decline in demand affecting all
sections of the Russian economy, which has impacted the demand for
petrochemicals in the short-term. However, the pandemic triggered an increase in
the demand for polymers in food packaging, and cleaning and hygiene products,
according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. With Russian
petrochemical companies having the advantage of access to low-cost feedstock,
and proximity to demand-rich Asian (primarily China) and European markets for
the supply of petrochemical products, these companies appear to be
well-positioned to derive full benefits from an improving market environment and
global economy post-COVID-19, says GlobalData.
We also remind that in
December 2020, Sibur, Gazprom Neft, and Uzbekneftegaz agreed to
cooperate on potential investments in Uzbekistan including a major expansion of
Uzbekneftegaz’s existing Shurtan Gas Chemical Complex (SGCC) and the proposed
construction of a new gas chemicals facility. The signed cooperation agreement
for the projects includes “the creation of a gas chemical complex using
methanol-to-olefins (MTO) technology, and the expansion of the production
capacity of the Shurtan Gas Chemical Complex”.
Ethylene and propylene are
feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE
imports to Russia decreased in January-November 2020 by 17% year on year and
reached 569,900 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the
greatest reduction in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia
increased by 21% year on year to about 202,000 tonnes in the first eleven months
of 2020. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase
in imports. |
