SABIC plans to meet carbon neutrality by 2050

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Basic Industries (SABIC), the world's fourth-biggest petrochemicals firm, announced plans on Saturday to meet carbon neutrality by 2050, reported Reuters with reference with the company's statement on the sidelines of the Saudi Green Initiative summit.

"SABIC is committed to the Paris Agreement goals and will continually pursue efforts and explore solutions to meet carbon neutrality from operations under our control by 2050, taking into account the different regional and national ambitions, commitments and initiatives", the world's fourth biggest petrochemical company by sales said.

"Focusing on our direct and indirect emissions generated by our own production, we aim to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 worldwide by 20% compared to 2018", it added.

Speaking at the Saudi Green Initiative (SGI) in Riyadh on Saturday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the world's top oil exporter aimed to reach 'net zero' emissions of greenhouse gases - mostly produced by burning fossil fuels - by 2060 - 10 years later than the United States. He also said it would double the emissions cuts it plans to achieve by 2030.

In May, the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world's top energy body, said in its "Net Zero by 2050" report that investors should not fund new oil, gas and coal supply projects beyond this year. And ahead of a U.N. climate summit that starts at the end of October, the IEA said investment in renewable energy needs to triple by the end of the decade if the world hopes to effectively fight climate change and keep volatile energy markets under control.

As MRC informed earlier, in late September 2021, SABIC said its joint venture project with ExxonMobil in the US Gulf Coast had started commissioning activities and preparing for an initial startup. The project includes the establishment of an ethylene production unit with annual capacity of about 1.8 MMtpy, which will feed two polyethylene (PE) units and a monoethylene glycol (MEG) unit, it said in a statement.

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) ranks among the world's top petrochemical companies. The company is among the world's market leaders in the production of polyethylene, polypropylene and other advanced thermoplastics, glycols, methanol and fertilizers.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Linde has announced that it has started up a new RM 40 MM air separation plant at the Sama Jaya High Tech Park in Kuching, Sarawak, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The plant will supply high purity gaseous nitrogen through an extensive pipeline network to multiple customers including Taiyo Yuden and LONGi. Ultra-high purity liquid oxygen will also be produced for customers in Kuching and throughout the ASEAN region.

“The increasing pace of digitalization and adoption of renewable energy has led to industry leaders in the electronics and solar technology markets expanding rapidly in the Sama Jaya High Tech Park. Linde has made multiple investments in recent years to support this growth, the latest project increasing Linde’s nitrogen capacity in the Sama Jaya High Tech Park to more than 18,000 Nm3/h,” said Linde Malaysia Managing Director, Anuj Sharma.

The new plant will feature Linde’s latest state-of-art technology with 30% better power efficiency, which is expected to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by more than 6,000 tons per year. This is in line with Linde’s target of reducing its GHG emissions intensity by 35%, by 2028.

The new plant will be connected to Linde’s Remote Operating Centre (ROC) located in Hicom Shah Alam, Selangor and can be monitored, controlled, and operated remotely. Remote operations capabilities helped Linde to ensure a continuous and reliable supply of industrial and medical gases to customers throughout the pandemic.

Anuj said that Linde had made multiple investments in the Sama Jaya High Tech Park since 1995. Since 1960, Linde has invested in building numerous world-class facilities in Malaysia, including Air Separation Units in Pengerang, Shah Alam, Sama Jaya, Bintulu and Pasir Gudang, steam methane reformers (hydrogen plants) and nitrogen plants at strategic locations across Malaysia, pipeline networks for oxygen and nitrogen in various industry clusters in key industrial areas, and a state-of-art cylinder filling facility in Banting.

Linde also established its Remote Operating Centre (ROC) in Hicom, which allows for the remote monitoring, operation and control of more than 100 Linde plants across the ASEAN and South Pacific regions. Linde also manufactures medical oxygen and other medicinal gases at various locations spread across West and East Malaysia.

As MRC reported earlier, in JUne 2021, SIBUR -Neftekhim and Linde Gas Rus signed agreements on implementation in 2021-2022. a project for the utilization of carbon dioxide (CO2) generated in the technological process of the SIBUR enterprise in Dzerzhinsk. SIBUR -Neftekhim will build an infrastructure for the transportation to the Linde Gas Rus site of crude CO2 obtained as a by-product in the process of ethylene oxide synthesis. In turn, Linde Gas Rus will build a unit to bring the quality of this gas to the level of a commercial product, applicable, among other things, in the food industry, and will sell it to end consumers.

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 1,638,370 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 989,570 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas shipments of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.

Linde is a leading global industrial gases and engineering company with 2020 sales of USD27 billion (EUR24 billion). The company serves a variety of end markets including chemicals & refining, food & beverage, electronics, healthcare, manufacturing and primary metals. Linde's industrial gases are used in countless applications, from life-saving oxygen for hospitals to high-purity & specialty gases for electronics manufacturing, hydrogen for clean fuels and much more. Linde also delivers state-of-the-art gas processing solutions to support customer expansion, efficiency improvements and emissions reductions.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Corp, one of the world's petrochemical major, is pursuing carbon capture storage (CCS) hubs across Asia and has started talks with some countries with potential storage options for carbon dioxide, reported Reuters with reference to the company's head of low carbon solutions' statement on Monday.

One of Exxon's key projects is to build CCS hubs in Southeast Asia, similar to one being built in Houston, Texas, ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions President Joe Blommaert told Reuters.

CCS traps emissions and buries them underground but is not yet at the commercialization stage.

CCS advocates, including oil majors and the International Energy Agency, see the technology as being essential to help meet net zero emissions and key to unlocking large-scale economic hydrogen production, although critics say CCS will extend the life of dirty fossil fuels. Melbourne-based Global CCS Institute said in October that global plans to build CCS projects surged 50% over the last nine months.

For CCS to take off, a transparent carbon price and cross-border pricing adjustment systems will be necessary to enable CO2 to be captured in one country and stored elsewhere, Blommaert said in an interview ahead of the Singapore International Energy Week.

"That's why a transparent value of carbon is so important, that it is a durable mechanism, that it is agnostic to what kind of technology that goes ... and that it works across borders because emissions do not know any borders," Blommaert said, adding he expects discussions of carbon border tax similar to that in Europe to occur in Southeast Asia.

"Because much of the world doesn't have carbon pricing, there's a risk that some operators will move to countries that don’t yet price emissions," he told the conference.

Last month, the US energy major said 11 companies have agreed to begin discussing plans that could lead to capturing and storing up to 50 MM tons per year (tpy) of CO2 in the Gulf of Mexico by 2030.

"Unlike in Houston, the storage capacity here is not close to the areas with the highest emissions," Blommaert said.

"That's why we've been studying the concept of placing CO2 capture hubs in some of Asia's heavy industrial areas such as here in Singapore and then connecting them to CO2 storage locations elsewhere in the region," he said, adding that CO2 could be transported via pipelines or ships.

Southeast Asia's industrial CO2 emissions exceeded 4 B tpy, Blommaert said, citing 2019 data from the International Energy Agency.

ExxonMobil has listed Singapore, home to the major's largest refining-petrochemical center globally, as one of its CCS projects. However, Singapore does not have suitable CO2 storage sites, a recent CCS study commissioned by Singapore government showed.

Another study by the Singapore Energy Centre, partly founded by ExxonMobil, estimated nearly 300 B tons of CO2 storage capacity in depleted oil and gas fields and saline formations in Southeast Asia, Blommaert said.

Countries in the region with potential storage sites include Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia where ExxonMobil has oil and gas production facilities. The US major also operates a joint refining-petrochemical complex in eastern China Fujian with Sinopec and Saudi Aramco.

Dwi Soetjipto, the head of Indonesia's upstream regulator SKK Migas, told reporters last week that ExxonMobil is planning a CCS project at its mega Cepu block in East Java.

As MRC informed before, ExxonMobil shut down at its cracker in Singapore for maintenance last year. Thus, the company halted operations at the cracker on September 14, 2020. The cracker remained off-line till end-October, 2020. Located at Jurong Island, Singapore, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 1 million mt/year and a propylene production capacity of 450,000 mt/year.

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 1,396,960 tonnes in January-July 2021, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 841,990 tonnes in the first seven months of 2021, up by 29% year on year. Supply of propylene homopolymers (homopolymer PP) and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) subsided.

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

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Solvay has now four authorized distributors: Boeing Distribution Services Inc., Composites One LLC, Integral Products, and NSL Aerospace, said the company.

These distributors will have access to select leading composite and adhesive material solutions that Solvay offers, including structural prepregs, DAPCO sealants, structural adhesives, surfacing films and tooling prepregs.

As developments to multiple advanced industries such as aerospace, automotive, industrial, electronics and e-mobility markets continue to move at a rapid pace, Solvay’s channel partnership strategy will be vital to delivering customer value. Solvay's authorised stocking distributors will bring expert sales and technical teams to respond to customer needs with advanced composite material solutions to drive sustainable progress and innovation.

As per MRC, Solvay, a science company delivering high performance materials for safe and reliable food packaging, has conducted a proof of concept showing that polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) has the potential to be recycled. PVDC is used in food, beverage and healthcare multilayer barrier packaging across the world.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,638,370 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 989,570 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas shipments of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.

Founded in 1863, Solvay today ranks among the world’s top three companies for the vast majority of its activities and delivered net sales of EUR10.2 billion in 2019. Solvay is listed on Euronext Brussels (SOLB) and Paris and in the United States, where its shares (SOLVY) are traded through a Level I ADR program.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Gazprom neftekhim Salavat will build Russia's first production of superabsorbent polymers Gazprom neftekhim Salavat has signed an agreement for the development of a basic design and a license agreement for the use of Songwon Industrial technology for the production of superabsorbent polymers (SAP), said the company.

The company will continue the chain of converting acrylates into superabsorbent polymers at its production site. In Salavat, crude acrylic acid, butyl acrylate and glacial acrylic acid are already being produced at the facilities of the acrylic acid and butyl acrylate production complex commissioned in 2017. In the production of products, we use our own raw materials - propylene from EP-355 and butanol from shop No. 52.

The production of SAP will be a logical continuation of the development of acrylate processing. In addition, superabsorbents based on acrylic polymers are included in the “Action Plan for Import Substitution of the Chemical Industry of the Russian Federation” approved by order of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia dated 06.07.2021 No. 2471. The implementation of the import-substituting project will allow the company to cover 60-70% of the needs for superabsorbents in Russia. Investments in a new project with a capacity of 45 thousand tons / year will be approximately Rb11 bn.

According to ICIS-MRC Price report, GNS resumed the production of LDPE after the scheduled maintenance works from 1 October. The outage was quite long and started from 20 July. The plant"s annual production capacity is 45,000 tonnes.

OAO "Gazprom neftekhim Salavat" (formerly OAO "Salavatnefteorgsintez") is one of the leading petrochemical companies in Russia, carrying out a full cycle of processing hydrocarbon material. The list of products manufactured by the plant includes more than 140 items, including 76 grades of the main products: gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, fuel oil, toluene, solvent, liquefied gases, benzene, styrene, ethylbenzene, butyl alcohols, phthalic anhydride and plasticizers, polyethylene, polystyrenes, silica gels and zeolite catalysts, corrosion inhibitors, elemental sulfur, ammonia and urea, glycols and amines, a wide range of household products made of plastics, surfactants and much more.
MRC