Baystar expects to receive commercial production at its new cracker in Texas in Q3 2021

Baystar expects to receive commercial production at its new cracker in Texas in Q3 2021

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Bayport Polymers LLC (Baystar), a joint venture of France's Total and Austria's Borealis, plans to receive commercial production at its new 1 million mt/year cracker in Texas in the 3rd quarter of 202q, reported S&P Global.

As of 11 June, the new cracker was progressing with its lengthy startup after construction was completed in the first quarter of 2021, according to a flaring notice on a community hotline and sources familiar with company operations.

The Baystar cracker in Port Arthur reported flaring late June 10 to the Southeast Texas Alerting Network, a community hotline intended to alert nearby residents of routing flaring, upsets and other issues affecting petrochemical plants and refineries.

"Operations require flaring," the notice said. Flaring, or burning of excess gases, is routine during plant startups.

The cracker will supply Total and Borealis' joint-venture 400,000 mt/year polyethylene (PE) plant near the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel, and an adjacent 625,000 mt/year PE unit under construction with startup expected in Q1 2022.

The Baystar joint venture, which originally included Canada's NOVA Chemicals, broke ground on the new cracker in 2018, and construction began on the new PE unit in 2019.

Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.

Bayport Polymers LLC (Baystar) was created as a joint venture in 2018 between three established petrochemical industry leaders, Total S.A. (Total), Borealis Holdings LLC and NOVA Chemicals. Borealis bought NOVA's interest in the joint venture in 2020.
MRC

ExxonMobil posts final results in election of board of directors

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil has released the final election results of the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders as confirmed by the independent election inspector, as per the company's press release.

The ExxonMobil board of directors will consist of Michael Angelakis, Susan Avery, Angela Braly, Ursula Burns, Kenneth Frazier, Gregory Goff, Kaisa Hietala, Joseph Hooley, Steve Kandarian, Alexander Karsner, Jeffrey Ubben and Darren Woods. Douglas Oberhelman, Sam Palmisano and Wan Zulkiflee will be departing the board.

“Our board looks forward to continuing to work in the best interest of all shareholders,” said Darren Woods, chairman and chief executive officer. “We welcome our new members and thank our three departing directors for their valuable contributions to the company. Doug and Sam provided guidance and shared their experience with the board over many years. While his time with us was brief, we thank Wan Zul and appreciate his input as we positioned the company to increase shareholder value and participate in the energy transition.”

As MRC informed previously, earlier this month, Gov. John Bel Edwards and ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Refinery Manager David Oldreive announced the company’s final investment decision for more than USD240 million in capital improvements at the ExxonMobil Baton Rouge Refinery.

Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC

Limetree Bay refinery to shut indefinitely

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Limetree Bay Energy will shut its St. Croix refinery indefinitely due to financial problems, the company said, after a series of operational setbacks shuttered the facility, reported Reuters.

The 210,000-barrel-per-day refinery had only restarted in February after being idle for nearly a decade, but was forced to shut in May after the facility sprayed nearby neighborhoods with a petroleum mist and residents complained of breathing problems.

Last month, the US Environmental Protection Agency ordered the plant shut for at least 60 days after those incidents, which also contaminated the community's water supply. The EPA also ordered the plant to install and operate 18 sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide monitors on St. Croix in order to restart.

EIG-backed Limetree has been unable to secure the necessary funding to restart the plant, and will lay off approximately 271 employees effective Sept. 19, the company said.

The refinery will begin preparations for an extended shutdown, including purging gases from all of the units and removing any residual oil and products in the lines.

Earlier this month, Reuters exclusively reported that Arclight Capital, which had a majority stake in the refinery, exited its position and removed the refinery from its portfolio in April after its fund experienced hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

The oil storage terminal will not be affected by the decision to suspend operations.

The refinery restarted in February under private equity ownership. It was designed to profit from an international clean-air marine fuel mandate known as IMO 2020. However, the plant suffered repeated setbacks, including high levels of corrosion in pipes and the decimation of demand by the COVID-19 pandemic. The restart was delayed more than a year and ran more than a billion dollars over budget. Limetree’s chief executive was replaced in November.

We remind that in late March 2021, EPA said it had revoked an expansion permit for the Limetree Bay oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands, citing concerns that the area around the facility is overburdened with pollution. The decision allowed the plant to keep operating but blocked ongoing expansion work pending an EPA review to assess measures the facility needs to take to protect nearby residents.

Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
MRC

Oxy withdraws staff from its US Gulf of Mexico facilities ahead of tropical storm

Oxy withdraws staff from its US Gulf of Mexico facilities ahead of tropical storm

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Occidental Petroleum Corp (Oxy) said it was withdrawing staff and implementing storm precautions at their US Gulf of Mexico offshore facilities ahead of a brewing tropical storm, reported Reuters.

A weather disturbance over the Gulf of Mexico could become a tropical storm by Friday and take aim at the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, the US National Weather Service said on Thursday.

“All of our facilities have plans to prepare for weather-related events and are implementing those procedures,” Occidental said on its website. It did not comment on production.

BP and Shell said they were monitoring the situation.

Tropical storm conditions could begin Friday along portions of the central Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Alabama/Florida border. Rainfall of up to 12 inches in isolated areas could hit the Gulf Coast and the Southern Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.

As MRC informed earlier, Chevron temporarily shut in production June 18 from two offshore Gulf of Mexico oil and gas platforms and evacuated some staff, ahead of a weather system that was expected to strengthen into a tropical storm and make landfall in southeast Louisiana.

We remind that Chevron Corp has restarted the 112,229 barrel-per-day (bpd) Pasadena, Texas, refinery night after completing a multi-unit overhaul that was extended because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire refinery was shut from mid-April, 2020, until mid-July, 2020 with the last units returning to production on Tuesday, 14 July. The overhaul was originally to finish in mid-June, but was extended to mid-July.

Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
MRC

Gerber and Terracycle partner to launch recycling program throughout Canada

Gerber and Terracycle partner to launch recycling program throughout Canada

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Baby food and baby products maker Gerber has announced a new partnership with international recycler TerraCycle to recover hard-to-recycle baby food packaging on a national scale throughout Canada, said Canplastics.

Parents are invited to sign up on the Gerber Recycling Program page at terracycle.com and mail in baby food packaging that’s currently not municipally recyclable, including flexible plastic bags, pouches and inner bags, using a prepaid shipping label. Once collected, the packaging is cleaned, melted down and then remolded to make new products.

The Gerber Recycling Program is free and open to any interested individual, school, office, or community organization nationwide. As an added incentive, for every pound of packaging waste sent to TerraCycle through the Gerber Recycling Program, registered participants can earn one-dollar to donate to a non-profit, school or charitable organization of their choice.

Gerber is a subsidiary of Nestle. These efforts on sustainable packaging build on more than a decade of progress and investment to achieve Nestle Canada’s ambitious sustainability goals to make 100 per cent of its packaging reusable or recyclable by 2025.

As per MRC, Styrenics Circular Solutions (SCS), a value chain initiative to increase the circularity of styrenics, announced that it has successfully demonstrated that polystyrene (PS) is mechanically recyclable to food contact standards. In cooperation with the Fraunhofer-Institute fur Verfahrenstechnik und Verpackung IVV, SCS performed so-called challenge tests, which confirmed the high cleaning efficiency of the mechanical recycling technology for polystyrene to remove impurities originating from waste streams. These results enable the first application for an opinion of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on the use of recycled polystyrene (r-PS) as food contact material.

As per ICIS-MRC Price Report, Gazprom neftekhim Salavat will shut its production for a scheduled one-month maintenance in mid-July. The average spot styrene monomer (SM) prices were fluctuated in Europe in a narrow range of USD1,160-1,175/tonne this week. Demand for Russian expandable polystyrene (EPS) was strong this month.

MRC