Dow completes construction of world-scale ethylene production facility in Freeport, Texas

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Dow Chemical Company has announced the completion of the construction phase of its new, world-scale ethylene production facility in Freeport, Texas, said the producer on its site.

The company reached this milestone within one week of the originally planned date, which was set approximately two years ago. Dow’s ethylene unit is now progressing through the commissioning phase, with start-up expected by mid-year.

"This tremendous milestone represents the Dow team’s unwavering ability to deliver on our commitments to meet the needs of our customers, generate value for our shareholders and to create opportunities for our employees," said Andrew Liveris, Dow’s chairman and CEO. "The Freeport ethylene unit is the cornerstone of our $6 billion investment in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Our growth investments leverage the advantaged shale gas supply available in the U.S., and represent thousands of new jobs and significant economic value, including exports of approximately 20 percent of our U.S. production."

At peak activity, the construction phase involved more than 3,000 Dow employees and contractors. The project achieved more than five million consecutive work hours without a lost-time incident. Dow’s new unit also represents one of the least capital-intensive ethylene investments1 currently announced across the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The world-scale production unit - with a nameplate capacity of 1.5 million metric tons - is a central component of Dow’s USD6 billion U.S. Gulf Coast investment program, designed to strengthen the competitiveness of its downstream, consumer-led businesses. It will feed Dow’s derivative investments, which will come on-line throughout 2017 and 2018 and include:

- ELITE Enhanced Polyethylene for high performance flexible food packaging and personal hygiene applications (Capacity: 400 KTA);
- New specialty low density polyethylene for industrial and supply chain packaging applications (Capacity: 350 KTA);
- Next Generation NORDEL metallocene EPDM to deliver solutions for higher-margin applications for the transportation, infrastructure and consumer durables end-markets (Capacity: 200 KTA);
- High Melt Index Specialty and Conventional Polyolefin Elastomers for high-performance flexible packaging, transportation and consumer markets (Capacity: 320 KTA); and
- Bi-modal gas phase de-bottleneck to enable more offerings for high-performance pipe and fitting applications, as well as the cap and closure market (125 KTA).

"The addition of Dow’s TX-9 cracker to our Freeport site is a great milestone. That site now has over 4 million metric tons of olefins capacity to provide low-cost integration strength to our targeted high-growth derivatives," said Doug May, business president for Hydrocarbons. "This is an important proof point of the Dow team’s ability to deliver the projected cost and schedule performance on a project of this size and sets the tone for how we can execute the commissioning and start-up of the ethylene unit over the next few months."

As MRC informed previously, Dow's Freeport complex currently has a 640,000 mt/year of PE capacity and is expected to add 1,050,000 mt/year of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE).

The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational chemical corporation. Dow is a large producer of plastics, including polystyrene, polyurethane, polyethylene, polypropylene, and synthetic rubber. In 2016, Dow had annual sales of YSD48 billion and employed approximately 56,000 people worldwide. The company's more than 7,000 product families are manufactured at 189 sites in 34 countries across the globe.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Reliance Industries has completed the sale of its Mauritius-incorporated arm Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation (GAPCO) which trades and markets fuel in the African markets to French energy major Total Marketing & Services, marking its exit from the international fuel retail business, reported The Economic Times.

In May 2016, the billionaire Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries' subsidiary, Reliance Exploration & Production DMCC, had signed an agreement to sell its entire 76% stake in GAPCO to TOTAL. The company has now concluded the transaction after obtaining requisite regulatory approvals and consents, RILBSE 3.93 % said in a statement on Wednesday.

"Since the acquisition of 76% equity interest in GAPCO by REPDMCC in 2007, GAPCO has significantly grown and is one of leading petroleum marketing company in East Africa owning retail outlets as well as onshore and offshore terminals," RIL said in the statement.

GAPCO is a holding company with operating subsidiaries in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda which are primarily engaged in petroleum product import, and trading, storage, distribution, marketing, supply and transportation of oil products in East Africa. The transaction also involved minority shareholder who sold their entire respective holdings in GAPCO for cash, the company said.

The company did not disclose the deal consideration. The acquisition would help Total, the fourth largest distributor of lubricants, to consolidate its presence in Africa where it is a leading distributor of petroleum products and increase its market share to over 20% from around 175 in 2015.

Reliance Industries, like other private sector energy company Essar Oil, has started expanding its fuel retail business after the government deregulated diesel prices in in October 2014.

As MRC informed previously, RIL has delayed the start-up of its new monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant until Q2 2017. The company scheduled to commence operations at the plant in Q2 2017. As per the earlier plans, the plant was to be started in December 2016. Located at Jamnagar, Gujarat in India, the plant has a production capacity of 750,000 mt/year.

Reliance Industries is one of the world's largest producers of polymers. The company is engaged in a wide range of activities, ranging from oil and gas production to production of polyester and polymer goods, including the production of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and textiles.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF has recently inaugurated its new Innovation Campus Asia Pacific, located in Mumbai, India. With a total expected investment of up to EUR 50 million, the projects marks BASF’s largest R+D investment in South Asia, as per GV.

All global research operations at the innovation campus will be housed under BASF Chemicals India Private Limited, a 100 % subsidiary of BASF.

The innovation campus will expand the company’s existing R+D activities in India to include global and regional research on a wide range of speciality chemicals. Topics will cover personal and home care, process development, organic synthesis, crop protection and many more. Amongst others, the approximately 20,000 m2 campus houses scientific and technical laboratories, offices, and an auditorium.

The innovation campus significantly expands BASF’s research capacities in India, which were established in 2005 and expanded in 2014 to cover agricultural research, organic synthesis, molecular modelling and advanced process research. The innovation campus includes laboratories for chemical synthesis, application and process development, as well as analytics. It brings all new and existing research and development activities by BASF in Mumbai under one roof. Combined with the broad range of current development activities, Innovation Campus Asia Pacific (Mumbai) will enable global know-how exchange and foster collaboration with customers, industrial and academic partners. The campus can accommodate up to 300 scientists and will bring together top scientists from India and other parts of the world.

"We see the demand for innovative solutions in many industries in India, including automotive as well as food and nutrition. Moreover, India is now home to a wide range of high caliber scientists and excellent domestic research capabilities," said Sanjeev Gandhi, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, BASF SE, responsible for Asia Pacific. BASF has expanded its presence in India during the past several years, both in terms of local manufacturing as well as in providing tailored solutions for the challenges of mobility, housing, environmental protection and hygiene. Through its local subsidiaries, namely BASF India Limited, BASF Chemicals India Private Limited and BASF Catalysts India Private Limited, the group has invested actively in India to realise these opportunities, with approximately EUR 300 million investment over the past four years in manufacturing and R&D.

One of BASF’s three central technology platforms, Advanced Materials & Systems Research, has been headquartered at the Innovation Campus Asia Pacific (Shanghai) since January 2016, headed by Dr. Harald Lauke, President of the technology platform and Regional Research Representative for Asia Pacific. The other two technology platforms, Chemical Engineering & Process Research and Bioscience Research, are respectively headquartered in Europe and North America. Innovation Campus Asia Pacific (Mumbai) will house research activities from all these platforms. Through its local subsidiary, BASF India Limited, the group has also been operating an Agricultural Research Station in Pune since 2015, and an R&D Center in Mangalore since 2014, focusing on offering technical and product development support to local and global automotive coatings customers. These R+D facilities form a strong network to drive and support both regional and global innovation projects.

At the end of 2016, BASF in India had 2,356 employees at ten production sites and ten offices, as well as two R+D centres, located in Mumbai and Mangalore. In 2016, BASF registered sales of approximately EUR 1.1 billion to customers in India.

As MRC wrote before, in early March 2017, BASF Catalysts India Private Limited inaugurated its new mobile emissions catalysts manufacturing site. The site includes a new 47,000-square-meter production plant, which replaces an existing BASF plant in Chennai and is the culmination of a three-year expansion project, which has doubled the company’s catalyst manufacturing capacity in India.

BASF is the world’s leading chemical company. Its portfolio ranges from chemicals, plastics, performance products and crop protection products to oil and gas. BASF generated sales of about EUR58 billion in 2016.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Zhongtian Hechuang Energy has restarted its linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant last week, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the company has resumed operations at the plant on March 24, 2017. The plant was shut for maintenance in mid-March 2017.

Located in Inner Mongolia, the plant has a capacity of 300,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed previously, another major petrochemical producer in China - Sinopec Maoming Petrochemical - shut its LLDPE plant for a maintenance turnaround early this week. The exact duration of the planned turnaround could not be ascertained. Located at Guangdong in China, the plant has a production capacity of 220,000 mt/year.

Zhongtian Hechuang Energy is a joint venture between Sinopec (38.75%), China Coal Group (38.75%), Shenergy Group Co., Ltd. (12.5%), and Inner Mongolia Manshi Coal Group (10%).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s first large-scale carbon capture storage and utilization (CCUS) facility enters construction. The facility's final investment decision represents a series of "firsts" for China and Yanchang Petroleum, one of China's largest oil and gas companies and the facility's owner, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

This is the first large-scale CCUS facility to enter construction in China and Asia, and the first large-scale coal-to-chemicals carbon capture and storage facility.

Located near Xi'an, Yanchang CCUS will capture more than 400,000 tpy of CO2 from two coal to gasification (syngas) plants. It will reinject captured CO2 into previously developed oil fields to release oil from existing formations in a process known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).

"Four years ago, this was an industrial plant venting CO2 into the atmosphere. Today, just four years later, it is a standard-bearer for clean technology,” said Alex Zapantis, Asia Pacific General Manager, Global CCS Institute. “This facility is expected to capture between 6 MMt and 8 MMt of CO2 over the course of its life. This is a massive credit to Yanchang Petroleum and the Shaanxi Province which has created a small piece of history in a city renowned for its rich history -- the famed Terracotta Army. We look forward to seeing Yanchang Petroleum and others like it continue to advance the climate change agenda across China and show the world how practical, cost effective and climate-relevant CCS is."

Currently, there are 16 large-scale CCS facilities in operation around the world with a further five coming onstream within the next 12-18 months.

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