Idemitsu Kosan to shut SM plant in Japan

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Idemitsu Kosan, one of Japan’s largest refining and petrochemical companies, is in plans to shut its SM plant for maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Japan informed that the plant is likely to be shut in April 2014. It will remain off-stream for around one month.

Located in Chiba, Japan, the plant has a production capacity of 210,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, Idemitsu Kosan, one of Japan’s largest refining and petrochemical companies, has announces its plans to transfer its PPS (polyphenylene sulfide) resin business to Lion Idemitsu Composites, a 50:50 joint venture between Lion Corp and Idemitsu Kosan.

Idemitsu Kosan is a Japanese petroleum company. It owns and operates oil platforms, refineries and produces and sells petroleum, oils and petrochemical products. The company runs two petrochemical plants in Chiba and Tokuyama. The two naphtha crackers can produce up to 997,000 tonnes of ethylene per year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Engineering Group said it has entered into a deal to build a USD3.1 billion plant in northern China to turn coal into petrochemicals, as China seeks to reduce its reliance on petrochemical imports, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Sinopec Group, said it would deploy a self-developed technology to make olefins from methanol, which can be extracted from coal. The coal-based process is cost competitive versus China's conventional way of making petrochemicals from more costly naphtha, a refinery product processed from crude oil.

"Sinopec has long realized that it needs to diversify feedstocks for making ethylene," said Yan Kefeng, an analyst with consultancy IHS CERA. The plant, at Uxin county of Inner Mongolia's Ordos city, is owned by Zhong Tian He Chuang Co. Ltd, a joint venture which has Sinopec Corp and China Coal Energy Company among its main investors.

"It is a significant milestone for SEG to establish an integrated new coal chemical industrial chain," the company said in a statement released late on Tuesday. Key facilities of the investment include a 3.6 million tpy synthetic methanol unit, two 1.8 million-tpy methanol to olefin units and two polypropylene units. Sinopec Engineering will hand over the project by Oct 30, 2015.

As MRC wrote before, Platts Energy Information, supplier of global energy resources information, has revealed the 2013 Top 250 Global Energy Companies ratings with Sinopec ranking the 10th on the list. Last year the company occupied the 12th position, thus, this year, it moved 2 places higher than in 2012.

Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest scale integrated energy and chemical companies with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. Its refining and ethylene capacity ranks No.2 and No.4 globally. The Company has 30,000 sales and distribution networks of oil products and chemical products, its service stations are now ranked third largest in the world.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Imports of suspension polyvinyl chloride (SPVC) into Kazakhstan increased by 13% over the first eleven months of 2013, reported MRC analysts.

November SPVC imports to Kazakhstan dropped to 2,900 tonnes under the pressure of seasonal factors from 3,800 tonnes in October. The overall PVC mports exceeded 28,000 tonnes from January to November 2013, while this figure was about 24,800 tonnes over the same period a year earlier.

Local producers of pipes and window profiles have ensured stronger demand for SPVC in Kazakhstan. Chinese producers are the key PVC suppliers with the overall share in the total imports of over 95%.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Russia's export duty on a number of goods, including PP, PE and PET, for delivery to Europe will be risen from 1 January 2014 from current 0%-3% to 6.5%, said the Russian Chemists Union (RCU) in its press release.

According to EU Regulation number 978/2012 (from 25 October 2012 on the application of the scheme of generalized tariff preferences and the abolition of the EU Council of the EU Regulation 732/2008) export tariffs for Russian exporters will be changed from 1 January, 2014.

Among the goods subject to the new rate will be polypropylene, polyethylene, PET, acetone, anhydrous ammonia, a number of phenols, etc.

Such a change in tariff rates will inevitably affect the competitiveness of our products in Europe, and possibly on the volume of deliveries, "- said the president of the Union of Chemists Viktor Ivanov.

EU regulation, which suggest new rates was adopted a few months after Russia's WTO accession, giving to Russian producers only a year to adapt to new duties. RCU hopes that the Ministry of Economic Development together with the chemical companies will work out procedures to protect the interests of the economic entities in the World Trade Organization.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- There was an incident at SIBUR-Kstovo (Nizhny Novgorod region), which produces ethylene and propylene, said sources to MRC.

SIBUR-Kstovo is tightly integrated into SIBUR's production chains and supplies its products to SIBUR-Neftekhim.

SIBUR's representatives said there was a blast at boiler furnace No. 2 at SIBUR-Kstovo's power unit, but it did not lead to fire. As a result, the boiler furnace broke down. There were no injuries.

At present, operations at all SIBUR-Kstovo's processing units were temporarily halted, pending clarification of causes of the accident. Due to the suspension of production, the discharge of pyrolysis furnaces with recycling of residual hydrocarbons, located in the machinery at the flare unit, was carried out as stipulated by current regulations. A commission was established to investigate the causes of the accident.

MRC analysts anticipate that a possible long-term outage at the ethylene complex with the capacity of 240,000 tonnes per year might affect the balance of the Russian propylene market, as well as, the production of polypropylene.

A few days earlier inhabitants of Kstovo (Nizhny Novgorod region) had complained of black smoke that came from SIBUR-Kstovo's flare and the smell of burning. The plant's representatives said the burning was of a temporary nature and was caused by a necessity to safely operate the plant's facilities. There were no threats to sanitary and epidemiological welfare of the population.

As reported earlier, RusVinyl, a joint venture of SIBUR and SolVin, which will produce polyvinyl chloride (PVC) with the capacity of 330,000 tonnes per year, should be launched in Kstovo in 2014.
MRC