PVC imports into Kazakhstan up by 8% in the first seven months of 2017

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Imports of unmixed polyvinyl chloride (PVC) into Kazakhstan rose in January-July 2017 by 8% year on year to 31,200 tonnes, reported MRC analysts.
PVC imports into Kazakhstan slightly decreased in July, reaching 6,000 tonnes compared with 6,600 tonnes in June.

Total SPVC imports to Kazakhstan increased to about 31,200 tonnes in the first seven months of this year, compared to 29,000 tonnes in the same period in 2016.

Due to the geographical position, the main suppliers of PVC to Kazakhstan were Chinese producers, with the share of about 99% of the local market over the stated period.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Citgo Petroleum is shutting its Corpus Christi oil refinery, said two sources, as a tropical storm that threatens to become a major hurricane by the weekend approaches the Texas coast, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

On Thursday, forecasters said Tropical Storm Harvey is expected to become a Category 3 hurricane packing 115 mile-per-hour (100 knot) wind speeds by landfall late Friday or early Saturday.

A spokeswoman for Citgo, the U.S. refining arm of Venezuela state-own oil company PDVSA, could not immediately be reached for comment. In a statement earlier today, the company said it was prepared to implement its contingency plans "if and when necessary."
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petronas has restarted a No.1 low density polyethylene (LDPE) plant following an unplanned shutdown, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Malaysia informed that the company has resumed operations at its plant last weekend. The plant was shut due to feedstock supply issue caused by an unplanned outage at the upstream cracker.

Located at Kerteh in Terrenganu, Malaysia, the No. 1 LDPE plant has a production capacity of 255,000 mt/year.

As MRC wrote before, in late January 2017, Petronas said its new USD27 billion refining and petrochemical complex project in the southeast Asian country is on track for start-up in 2019. RAPID, located within the Pengerang Integrated Complex in the southern Malaysian state of Johor, is designed to have a 300,000-bpd oil refinery and a petrochemical complex with a production capacity of 7.7 MMt.

Petronas, short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad, is a Malaysian oil and gas company wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia. The Group is engaged in a wide spectrum of petroleum activities, including upstream exploration and production of oil and gas to downstream oil refining; marketing and distribution of petroleum products; trading; gas processing and liquefaction; gas transmission pipeline network operations; marketing of liquefied natural gas; petrochemical manufacturing and marketing; shipping; automotive engineering; and property investment.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- DuPont Clean Technologies (DuPont) has been awarded the contract to supply the China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) with a second STRATCO alkylation unit; this time for the Sinopec Qilu Petrochemical Corporation (Sinopec Qilu), as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The Sinopec Qilu company is a large-scale refiner and producer of petrochemicals, fertilizers and chemical fiber in Zibo, Shandong Province. In order to comply with the China V standard of 10 ppm sulfur content for fuel, Sinopec commissioned DuPont for the license, engineering and equipment of a STRATCO® alkylation unit with 400 Mtpy (10.300 Mbpd) alkylate capacity.

The STRATCO® alkylation unit will enable Sinopec Qilu to generate low-sulfur, high-octane, low-RVP alkylate with zero olefins that meets the criteria of the China 5 standard. Startup is targeted for mid-2018.

“Due to extreme plot space limitations within the Sinopec Qilu refinery, DuPont has designed the STRATCO® alkylation unit with the innovative Model 74 Contactor reactors. This is the first application of the Model 74 Contactor™ reactors, which were developed to reduce the number of reactors in an alkylation unit. This not only reduces the amount of plot space required, but also results in an overall lower capital cost while offering the extremely high reliability and on-stream time that refiners have come to expect from the STRATCO alkylation technology,” said Kevin Bockwinkel, global business manager, STRATCO® Alkylation Technology.

Fundamentally, the Model 74 Contactor reactor is the same as commercially operating Contactor reactors in service throughout the world. The Model 74 Contactor reactor includes the latest improvements and each has a volume of 68.1 m3 (18,000 gallons) while the standard size Contactor reactor (Model 63) has a volume of 43.5 m3 (11,500 gallons) per reactor. Both reactor models are commercially available from DuPont.

"Sinopec is driving gasoline and diesel production to new, lower-emission specifications at its refineries," said Eli Ben-Shoshan, global business leader, DuPont Clean Technologies. "DuPont is pleased to be able to assist Sinopec with a custom-designed solution for its site to produce cleaner fuel."

The Sinopec Tianjin Company (TPCC) had previously awarded a contract to DuPont for a STRATCO alkylation unit at its oil refinery in the Tianjin Binhai New Area district in northern China. The Tianjin alkylation unit startup is scheduled for mid-2018.

Licensed and designed by DuPont, the STRATCO alkylation technology is the established global leader in the industry with over 90 units licensed worldwide and more than 850 Mbpd (33.3 Mtpy) of installed capacity. For over 80 yr, the STRATCO technology has helped refineries safely to produce cleaner-burning fuel with high octane, a low Rvp, low sulfur and zero olefins.

As MRC informed before, in late June 2017, chemical companies DuPont and the Dow Chemical Company reached a proposed agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division that will enable the firms to advance the proposed merger of equals, which is to take place on 31 August, 2017. By that time, Dow and DuPont had already secured clearance in several jurisdictions, including approvals in the US, Europe, Brazil and China.

DuPont is an American chemical company that was founded in July, 1802. The company manufactures a wide range of chemical products, leading extensive innovative research in this field. The company is the inventor of many unique plastics and other materials, including neoprene, nylon, Teflon, Kevlar, Mylar, Tyvek, etc. DuPont was the developer and main producer of Freon used in the production of refrigeration equipment.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- SayanskKhimPlast (Irkutsk region) began a gradual resumption of its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production after shutdown for a scheduled turnaround, according to the ICIS-MRC's Price report.

The plant's representative said works on the resumption of PVC production have begun since 25 August after a long outage for maintenance. The outage at SayanskKhimPlast was quite long and lasted for about 30 days.

At the same time, the forced shutdown at Bashkir Soda Company's PVC production capacities continued. The Baskhir plant had to stop its production of resin on 16 August because of problems with supply of ethylene. The resumption of production will take place in the next few days. The plant's annual production capacity is 240,000 tonnes.

As reported earlier, complex tests, which confirmed the possibility of producing 350,000 tonnes of PVC, 216,000 tonnes of caustic soda and 183,600 tonnes of chlorine per year, were completed at all SayanskKhimplast's production facilities in June.

JSC "Sayanskkhimplast" (Irkutsk region), established in 1998, is a complex of large-capacity chlororganic production facilities connected in a single production cycle. SayanskKhimPlast produces PVC, caustic soda and bleach. After commissioning of RusVinyl's PVC production (Nizhny Novgorod region), SayanskKhimPlast became Russia's second largest PVC producer.
MRC