OPTC shut down PTA plant in Taiwan

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oriental Petrochemical Taiwan Co (OPTC) has shut its purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant owing to weak market conditions, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Taiwan informed that the plant was shut in early January 2015. A restart date for the plant could not be ascertained.

Located atTaoyuan in Taiwan, the plant has a production capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote previously, Oriental Petrochemical is likely restarted its PTA plant in Taiwan in end-December 2013. It was shut down on November 6, 2013 for maintenance turnaround. Located in Taoyuan, Taiwan, the plant has a production capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

We remind that China based company Xianglu Petrochemical started up its new purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant in end-November 2013. Located in Xiamen, China, the plant has a production capacity of 1.5 million mt/year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The petrochemicals sector has been squeezed in the past few months, even while the longer-term prospects for the industry in the region look positive, said Thenational.

Companies such as Sabic are being hit by a combination of lower oil prices as well as lower demand and thus tighter margins.

Sabic has long-term contracts for its feedstocks from Saudi Aramco. So the decline in oil prices will not have affected its cost base. But as the naphtha-linked sales of its end products decline, it will take time to adjust and recover margins, analysts say.

Projects have also been hit by the downturn, one in Saudi Arabia last October and another in Qatar last week.

But the news has not been all bad. In the UAE, petrochemicals trade via the Jebel Ali Free Trade Zone experienced 20 per cent growth in the two years to 2014, when annual petchem trade reached USD14 billion, according to Jafza.

And according to a recent report by the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the Middle East’s chemical industry is projected to outpace the industry’s global growth through the rest of this decade, with petrochemicals expected to record annual growth of 8.3 per cent and end up with 75 per cent of the market.

As MRC wrote before, Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (Sabic), the world's biggest petrochemical maker by sales, reported a 29% drop in fourth-quarter profit as lower oil prices reduced returns from its own products. Net income dropped to 4.36 billion riyals (USD1.16 billion) from 6.16 billion riyals a year earlier, the Riyadh-based company said in a statement today. Sales slipped 10% to 43.4 billion riyals.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mexico's state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) is joining oil producers worldwide in the race to lower costs as prices plunge, with one difference - no staff cuts, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Pemex, which is preparing to end its Mexican oil monopoly, is looking to save USD2 billion to USD3 billion this year on purchases and through reducing rates with contractors, CEO Emilio Lozoya said in an interview.

The company plans to disclose that it cut procurement expenses by 21 billion pesos (USD1.44 billion) in 2014, he said. Pemex is one of the country’s top employers, with about 153,000 full-time staff.

"We still have important areas of opportunity to generate savings," Lozoya said from Pemex headquarters in Mexico City. "Job cutting is not an area where we’re looking for possible savings."

While Pemex cut drilling activity by 24% to 491 wells as of November, Lozoya is confident of meeting a daily output goal of 2.4 million bbl in 2015, about where it was last year.

"Any budget cuts will affect spending first, and if it’s needed, investment will be last," he said.

As MRC informed earlier, in October 2014, Pemex and Exxon Mobil Corp signed a non-commercial agreement to jointly explore potential upstream and downstream business opportunities.

Pemex, Mexican Petroleum, is a Mexican state-owned petroleum company. Pemex has a total asset worth of USD415.75 billion, and is the world's second largest non-publicly listed company by total market value, and Latin America's second largest enterprise by annual revenue as of 2009. Company produces such polymers, as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shell restarted its ethylene cracker in Bukom, Singapore, this week following a three-month maintenance and expansion works to raise the unit's capacity, said Reuters, citing trading sources not related to the oil major.

Shell declined to comment on the restart dates of the cracker when contacted through email.

"In keeping with our disclosure policy, we cannot provide details with respect to the work," a Singapore-based spokeswoman said.

Shell said the expansion work would increase the capacity of the cracker by 20%. The cracker originally had a capacity of 800,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of ethylene.

The cracker uses a range of feedstock including naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to produce ethylene, a building block for plastics.

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) -- Japan-based Sumitomo Chemical is in plans to shut a caprolactam plant permanently, said Apic-online.

A source in Japan informed that the plant is likely to be mothballed in end-2015.

Located at Ehime in Japan, the plant has a production capacity of 95,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote before, Sumitomo Chemical will permanently wind up the operations of an ethylene plant at its Chiba Works in Ichihara, Chiba, in or before September 2015, following a decline in domestic demand for ethylene derivatives.

Sumitomo Chemical is a Japanese based manufacturer of a diverse range of products, including basic chemicals, petrochemicals and plastics, fine chemicals, agricultural chemicals, IT-related chemicals and pharmaceuticals.
MRC