Gazprom Neft lifts profit

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russian Gazprom Neft beat analyst forecasts with a 3% year-on-year increase in third-quarter net profit, said Upstreamonline.

The oil-producing arm of state gas export monopoly Gazprom reported a net result of 57.5 billion roubles (USD1.75 billion), compared with 55.95 billion roubles a year earlier, while a Reuters poll of analysts had expected the company to earn 52.3 billion roubles in the latest quarter.

Gazprom Neft, which has set itself the target of doubling oil production to 100 million tonnes (2 million barrels per day) by 2020 reported turnover of 402.3 billion roubles, which was also better than expected.

Quarterly earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were up 40.3% over the year to 96.1 billion roubles.

Its capital expenditure in the first nine months increased 11.4% year on year, driven mainly by new project development and use of new technology to maintain production at mature fields, the company stated.

As MRC wrote before, Gazprom Neft has signed an agreement with France-based Total to form a joint venture to produce and sell modified bitumen and bitumen emulsions on the Russian market. Each partner will have a 50% stake in the joint venture, which will build a special production facility at Gazprom Neft's Moscow oil refinery.

Gazprom Neft, is the fourth largest oil producer in Russia and ranked third according to refining throughput. It is a subsidiary of Gazprom, which owns about 96% of its shares. The company is registered and headquartered in St. Petersburg after central offices were relocated from Moscow in 2011.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petronas plans to secure another joint venture (JV) partner for the Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (Rapid) project in Pengerang, Johor, as per Plastemart.

To date, Petronas has inked agreements with Italy's Versalis SpA, Japan's Itochu and Bangkok-listed PTT Global Chemical as JV partners, to build specialty chemical plants.

CEO and Executive VP-Downstream Business, Datuk Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin said the national oil company was currently working towards finalising a few shareholders' agreement with existing JV partners. "We will announce the final investment decision regarding the project by the end of the first quarter next year," he added.

As MRC wrote before, the RM60 billion Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project will not be completed on time due to delays by the Johor government. The mega project was previously slated to start operations in 2016, but Petronas announced today that the date has been pushed to early 2017.

The RAPID project is on track to secure its final investment decision (FID) in March 2014, Petronas said.
The RAPID project is set to occupy over 2.43 hectares of the Pengerang Integrated Petroleum Complex’s (PIPC) 22,500 acres, which is home to some 28,000 Pengerang parliamentary constituents in the southernmost tip of Johor.
PIPC is a massive RM170 billion project that is expected to turn Malaysia into a mega petrochemical hub.


MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- An estimated 1,000 pounds of ethylene was released Friday at Dow's Freeport, Texas, site, the company said in a filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, as per Plastemart.

The release occurred when workers were performing maintenance on the plant's Polyethylene 4 unit, the company told TCEQ. The incident lasted one minute.

As per Dow, the maintenance was necessary to purge the reactor prior to restarting. It was unclear if the reactor had been restarted Monday or if any production had been lost as a result of the maintenance.

The Freeport facility has a total polyethylene capacity of 1.4 bln lbs, producing 445 mln lbs/year of low density polyethylene, 562 mln lbs/year of linear low density polyethylene and 410 mln lbs/year of high density polyethylene.

As MRC reported earlier, in March this year, Dow Chemical signed a long-term ethylene off-take agreement with a new Japanese joint venture that will allow the chemical producer to enhance its performance plastics franchise. The joint venture is being formed between Japanese companies Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui & Co. to construct and operate a Linear Alpha Olefins unit on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Dow - the world's second-largest chemical producer by revenue - is a large consumer of linear alpha olefins and utilizes them within its performance plastics franchise for the production of high-performance materials.

The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational chemical corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. Dow is a large producer of plastics, including polystyrene (PS), polyurethane, polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and synthetic rubber. In 2012, Dow had annual sales of approximately USD57 billion. The company's more than 5,000 products are manufactured at 188 sites in 36 countries across the globe.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Kaliningrad plant Alco-Naphtha, Russia' largest plant for the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), shut down its production of PET chips for a scheduled turnaround on 11 November, 2013, according to MRC price report.

The plant's plans to shut down its production became known on 18 October, they were also stated on the company's official site, however, the exact dates of the outaged were not disclosed. According to preliminary information, the maintenance works will last for two-three weeks. It should be noted that all the contractual obligations for shipments of material will be carried out in time because of the already built up stocks of PET chips, sources at the plant said.

To date, Alco-Naphtha is the largest PET plant in Russia. The plant's annual production capacity is 220,000 tonnes.

At the moment, already three plants in the CIS countries are shut down for maintenance, two of which are situated in Russia (Alco-Naphtha and Senege) and one is in Belarus (Mogilevkhimvolokno).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ningbo-based Keyuan Petrochemicals has announced plans to build a new S-SBR production ­facility and expand its existing ethylene-styrene copolymer plant, according to GV.

Keyuan, citing increased demand for S-SBR in the tyre market, said it is building a 150,000 t/y facility that will utilise its own production technology.

The project, for which location and construction schedule were not given, is estimated to have a cost of USD 99.5 million. Additionally, Keyuan is expanding the capacity of its ethylene-styrene copolymer plant to 200,000 t/y from 80,000 t/y, allowing for the sale of 120,000 t/y to down-stream petrochemical producers. This ­facility can be considered the bridge between original products and high-value added products and will complete the integration of internal resources, Keyuan said.

As MRC wrote previously, Regarding Keyuan’s previously announced plans for a new 400,000-t/y acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plant in China’s Guangxi Province, the company said it is currently going through the government approval process and design phase. Keyuan now expects the first phase of the project to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2014.

Keyuan Petrochemicals, Inc., established in 2007 and operating through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Keyuan Plastics, Co. Ltd., is located in Ningbo, China and is a leading independent manufacturer and supplier of various petrochemical products. The company is located in Qingshi Industrial Park, Ningbo, China and has annual petrochemical manufacturing design capacity of 720,000 metric tons for a variety of petrochemical products, including BTX aromatics, propylene, styrene, MTBE and other chemicals.
MRC