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MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Africa's
Environmental Ministry said on Wednesday it would investigate whether
petrochemical company Sasol's Secunda operations could be the source of a
sulphur smell experienced in parts of Gauteng and Mpumalanga provinces since the
weekend, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The
Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries said the smell was likely a
combination of elevated levels of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen
sulphide.
Sasol said in a statement on its website on Tuesday that its
Secunda operations did not have any operational incidents that could have
resulted in an increase in sulphur emissions.
The company said it had
also started an investigation to assist in identifying the area of origin of the
sulphur odour experienced in the region. Sasol said it could not immediately
comment further.
The ministry said it would decide on any further course
of action once the investigations were completed.
As MRC wrote previously,
Sasol's world-scale US ethane cracker with the capacity of 1.5 mln tonnes per
year reached beneficial operation on 27 August 2019. Sasol's new cracker, the
heart of Lake Charles Chemicals Project (LCCP), is the third and most
significant of the seven LCCP facilities to come online and will provide
feedstock to the company's six new derivative units at its Lake Charles
multi-asset site.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing
polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2%
year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density
polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to
the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the
formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers'
inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random copolymer
increased.
Sasol is an international integrated chemicals and energy
company that leverages technologies and the expertise of our 31 270 people
working in 32 countries. The company develops and commercialises technologies,
and builds and operates world-scale facilities to produce a range of high-value
product stream, including liquid fuels, petrochemicals and low-carbon
electricity. |
