Sasol CFO to step down in mid-2022

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sasol Ltd. Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Paul Victor will step down after more than two decades with the fuel and chemical maker, reported Bloomberg.

He will be succeeded by Royal Bafokeng Platinum Ltd.’s CFO Hanre Rossouw, Sasol said Thursday in a statement. Victor has agreed to remain with the company until June 30, 2022, when it reports annual results.

Victor held the role of CFO through a turbulent time for Sasol, as the company’s shares were battered by oil price volatility and it struggled to contain cost overruns at the Lake Charles Chemicals Project in Louisiana. Ballooning debt forced the company to consider a USD2 billion rights offer and accelerate a disposal of global assets.

Rossouw, who will join Sasol in April, has restructured RBPlat’s balance sheet by refinancing debt, introducing a new capital allocation framework and a new dividend policy, Sasol Chairman Sipho Nkosi said in the statement. Rossouw has also held roles as portfolio manager at Investec Asset Management and CFO of Xstrata Alloys.

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 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.

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.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- By the end of 2021, Royal Dutch Shell will have just one operating crude oil refinery in the United States: The 227,400-bpd refinery in Norco, Louisiana, said Reuters.

Sources familiar with Shell’s plans say the company will likely hang on to the Norco refinery because of its role in supplying the company’s chemical plants. "Norco is integrated with them," one of the sources said of the refinery, 25 miles (40 km) west of New Orleans.

In addition to producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, the Norco refinery produces ethylene and propylene that go to the adjoining Shell Norco chemical plant and to the nearby Shell Geismar, Louisiana, plant. A Shell spokesman did not reply to a request for comment.

In May, Shell announced the sales of its Anacortes, Washington, refinery as well as the controlling interest in the joint-venture Deer Park, Texas, refinery. The company also sold its chemical refinery in Mobile, Alabama.

All three sales are to close in the fourth quarter of 2021. Shell’s shift out of refining to emphasize petrochemical production anticipates a fall in demand for fuels refined from crude oil as motor vehicles shift away from carbon-intensive fuels.

As early as 2014, Shell identified Norco’s gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker (FCC) as the more profitable at two Louisiana refineries then operated by the Motiva partnership between Shell and Saudi Aramco.

The partnership split in 2017 with Shell keeping the Norco and Convent refineries in Louisiana. Shell shut the Convent refinery in December after overhauling the FCC in 2018. Shell has configured the shut Convent refinery for a possible sale or restart, the company has said.

As MRC informed previously, in late May, 2021, Shell agreed to sell its controlling interest in a Texas refinery to partner Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) for about USD596 million. And in early May, Shell announced the sale of its 149,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in Washington to Hollyfrontier Corp.

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.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sulzer Chemtech Ltd. (Winterthur, Switzerland) has completed the delivery of key polymerization technologies to Denka’s styrenics resin plant in Singapore, according to Chemical Engineering.

This will allow the chemical manufacturer to quickly expand its production capacity. The company is now in a stronger position to promptly address the ever-increasing global market demands for polymers.

Denka’s latest production line features Sulzer Chemtech’s advanced processing equipment to maximize the conversion of melt into high-quality, homogeneous plastic with high throughput, while minimizing any thermal degradation.

Sulzer Chemtech completed the project one month ahead of the agreed delivery date thanks to its global network of engineering specialists that can be mobilized to support urgent process equipment needs. Even more, it was able to do that despite key challenges posed by the pandemic and while ensuring the safety and wellbeing of all teams involved.

As a result, Denka will be able to ramp up production at its facility, ultimately increasing its revenue. Furthermore, the company will be able to achieve these goals without growing its manufacturing footprint or investing considerable capital in the polymerization process.

As MRC reported earlier, in late 2020, Denka Singapore Co Ltd announced that it would discontinue the production of DENKA STYROL GPPS after 22 years in business. The production of the seven rades had been suspended by the end of November 2020. The final sales of these cargoes took place by the end of December 2020. Denka cited the cease of general purpose polystyrene (GPPS) production in order to optimize the overall operation of the plastic business.
Denka Singapore Co Ltd is one of the major polystyrene (PS) producers in the Southeast Asia region with an annual capacity of 200,000 tons of GPPS.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated consumption of polystyrene (PS) and styrene plastics totalled 187,320 tonnes in the first four months of 2021, up by 20% year on year. April estimated consumption of PS and styrene plastics in the country was 49,370 tonnes, up by 35% year on year (36,620 tonnes a year earlier).
MRC

1. OPEC forecasts point to oil supply deficit from August to 2022 as economies recover from the pandemic

MOSCOW (MRC) -- OPEC's forecasts point to an oil supply deficit in August and in the rest of 2021 as economies recover from the pandemic, suggesting the group and its allies have room to raise output at a meeting this week, reported Reuters. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies, known as OPEC+, is returning 2.1 million barrels per day (bpd), about 2% of world output, to the market from May through July as part of a plan to ease last year's record output curbs. OPEC+ meets on Thursday to discuss supply for later months. With oil at its highest since 2018, sources say a further boost in August will be discussed, but some producers are wary about new demand setbacks and higher Iranian supply.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Crude oil futures were higher during mid-morning trade in Asia July 1 after the Energy Information Administration reported a large draw in US crude inventories, but the upside was capped by lackluster US products data and caution ahead of the OPEC+ meeting scheduled for later in the day, reporte S&P Global.

At 10:21 am Singapore time (0221 GMT), the ICE September Brent futures contract was up 30 cents/b (0.40%) from the previous settle at USD74.92/b, while the NYMEX August light sweet crude contract was 28 cents/b (0.38%) higher at USD73.75/b.

EIA data released late June 30 showed a headline US crude draw of 6.72 million barrels to 452.34 million barrels in the week ended June 25, almost 7% below the five-year average for this time of year and marking the sixth consecutive week of decline amid rising US refinery demand. Total US net crude inputs rose 190,000 b/d to average 16.3 million b/d in the week, while refinery utilization climbed 0.7 percentage points to 92.9% of total capacity, the highest since the week ended Jan. 3, 2020.

However the boost to global prices was limited, as the market had been expecting the large fall in crude inventories after the American Petroleum Institute a day earlier reported a 8.15 million-barrel draw for the same week, and the products data was lackluster. US gasoline inventories rose 1.52 million barrels to 241.57 million barrels in the week, while total product supplied for gasoline, the EIA's proxy for demand, slipped around 3% to a three-week low of 9.17 million b/d.

Distillate inventories slipped 870,000 barrels to 137.10 million barrels, even as implied demand rose 5.6% to 4.17 million b/d.

The relative stability in the market comes as investors await the OPEC+ meeting scheduled for later in the day, which was expected to provide guidance on the producer group's production quotas for August.

Analysts have said that given the demand-side risk posed by the resurgent spread of the Delta coronavirus variant, and with additional Iranian barrels potentially entering the market following a possible deal on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the coalition is likely to agree on a tempered increase of 500,000 b/d of oil production in August.

"Saudi Arabia remains cautious on demand and Iran nuclear talks, while Russia is more focused on regaining market share as demand rebounds," Platts Analytics said in a recent note. "However, with Brent already in the mid-USD70s, both will likely be committed to not overheating the market."

We remind that as MRC informed earlier, Indian refiners, anticipating a lifting of US sanctions, plan to make space for the resumption of Iranian imports by reducing spot crude oil purchases in the second half of the year. The world"s third-largest oil consumer and importer halted imports from Tehran in 2019 after former US President Donald Trump withdrew from a 2015 accord and re-imposed sanctions on the OPEC producer over its disputed nuclear programme.

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