MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Africa's largest crude oil refinery - SAPREF, a 50/50 joint venture between BP and Shell, will begin restarting, after temporarily shutting down as a wave of violent looting swept across the country, reported Reuters with reference to the operators statement.
The refinery, situated in the east coast port city of Durban, shut down last week due to violence that claimed more than 200 lives and caused billions of rands worth of damage.
SAPREF has a nameplate capacity of 180,000 barrels per day and accounts for around 35% of the refining capacity in Africa's most industrialised economy, a net importer of petroleum products.
The refinery restart will take between 7-10 days to be completed, the operators said.
As MRC informed previously, in April 2021, SAPREF let a contract to KBR Inc. to provide technology for an upgrade of the 33,000-b/d FCC unit at its 180,000-b/d refinery in Durban, South Africa. As part of the contract, KBR will license its Catalyst Regeneration technology as well as deliver basic engineering, detailed engineering, and proprietary equipment for the FCC regenerator project, which will enable SAPREF to improve the unit’s reliability and integrity by optimizing catalyst and air distribution.
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 953,400 tonnes in the first five months of 2021, which virtually corresponded to the same figure a year earlier. High denisty polyethylene (HDPE) shipments decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 607,8900 tonnes in January-May 2021, up by 33% year on year. Shipments of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas deliveries 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.
BP is one of the world's largest oil and gas companies, serving millions of customers every day in around 80 countries, and employing around 85,000 people. BP’s business segments are Upstream (oil and gas exploration & production), and Downstream (refining & marketing). Through these activities, BP provides fuel for transportation; energy for heat and light; services for motorists; and petrochemicals products for plastics, textiles and food packaging. It has strong positions in many of the world's hydrocarbon basins and strong market positions in key economies.
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