Ube, JSR and Mitsubishi Chem to start up new joint venture ABS company in April

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ube Industries, JSR Corp. and Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC) are scheduled to start up a new company on 1 April 2018, which combines the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) businesses of the parties' respective subsidiaries, as per Apic-online.

The combination involves UMG ABS Ltd., a 50-50 joint venture of Ube and MCC, and Techno Polymer Co., a JSR subsidiary. The new company, Techno-UMG Co., will be owned 51% by JSR and 49% by UMG ABS.

The transaction was originally scheduled to take effect on 1 Oct. 2017, but was delayed due to the amount of time needed to complete the procedures stipulated in competition laws.

As MRC informed before, in late 2017, Ube Industries, JSR Corp. and Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC) received European Commission (EC) approval for the planned integration of their ABS subsidiaries.

Mitsubishi Chemical with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, is a diversified chemical company involved in petrochemicals, polymers, agrochemicals, speciality chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The company's main focus is on three business pillars: petrochemicals, performance and functional products, and health care.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - The Diamond Pipeline has scrambled crude oil flows around the U.S. Gulf Coast and Midwest since it opened in December, cutting supply at the Cushing hub and hammering Louisiana oil prices, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The line from Cushing, Oklahoma to Memphis, Tennessee, a joint venture between Plains All American Pipeline LP and Valero Energy Corp , has dented volumes on the Capline system - the nation's largest crude pipeline that runs from the Gulf to key refineries in the Midwest.

Prices for Gulf Coast crude grades traded in the Louisiana region have been hit hard. Light Louisiana Sweet (LLS) and Mars - the two main Gulf grades - crashed to six-month lows versus U.S. crude futures. With lower demand for Louisiana crude supplies, the LLS grade in particular is more sensitive to export arbitrage economics and U.S. crude's discount to Brent narrowed to the tightest in more than five months on Monday.

"Those Capline flows could be backing out LLS barrels into the St. James area, causing more supply and putting pressure on prices," Adam Bedard, CEO of Denver, Colorado-based ARB Midstream said.

The price for Mars, a medium sour grade, traded on Friday at a USD1.10 per barrel discount versus WTI crude futures, the weakest since June. Louisiana Light Sweet slipped to a $2.17 premium on Thursday, also the lowest since June. The LLS grade is delivered into the hub in St. James, Louisiana, and Mars is deliverable at the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) facilities in Clovelly, Louisiana.

Volumes on Capline, once a major artery for imports and Gulf of Mexico crude used by U.S. Midwest refiners, have declined sharply as the U.S. shale boom pushed inland crude to the East Coast and Gulf Coast. The line can carry as much as 1.2 million barrels of oil daily from St. James, Louisiana, to Patoka, Illinois but has seen volumes further eroded by Diamond, which has capacity of up to 200,000 barrels, traders said. Flows on the Capline trunk line have fallen from about 310,000 bpd in July to about 219,000 bpd in the week ended Jan. 19, while Diamond was just above 150,000 bpd in that week, according to data from energy intelligence and monitoring firm Genscape.

The 440-mile long Diamond line feeds Valero's Memphis, Tennessee refinery, which has a capacity of about 190,000 bpd. Valero has historically moved large volumes from North Dakota's Bakken shale region by rail to Louisiana and then shipped it up Capline, a long and expensive route, traders said.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Materia, Inc., a world-leading supplier of high-performance thermoset polymers, has announced that Christopher Murphy has been named president and chief executive officer effective February 1, as per Prnewswire.

Murphy succeeds Nitin Apte who has been named chief executive officer of a renewable energy company based in Singapore.

"As a former business and sales leader at SABIC and E.I. Dupont de Nemours, Chris has a proven track record of profitably growing materials businesses, commercializing technology and winning in new market applications," said Ray Roberge, Materia's Chairman of the Board. "Chris is the right person at the right time to lead the growth of Materia's advanced polymer business and we are very pleased that he will be joining our team."

"The Materia Board thanks Nitin for his many contributions and for positioning Materia for rapid growth through new strategic partnerships and expansion of the company's manufacturing footprint," said Roberge. "We wish Nitin much success in his new endeavor."

Murphy joins Materia from SABIC where he served as Americas Director in the automotive business and Global Business Director for specialty blends and compounds driving impressive business growth. During his service at E.I. Dupont De Nemours, Inc., Murphy served in positions of increasing responsibility including automotive marketing manager, regional sales and marketing director and global initiatives director. In his most recent DuPont assignment, Murphy led the transition for multiple divestitures of large, complex global businesses and the negotiations and implementation that maximized divestiture value.

"I am honored to have the opportunity to lead Materia at such a pivotal time in the company's history, as well as to work with such a committed and innovative team," said Murphy.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - Indonesia's Pertamina appointed a consortium of partners to develop a new USD10 billion refinery at Bontang, said Ardhy N. Mokobombang, director of refinery megaprojects and petrochemicals at the state-owned energy company, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Indonesia, one of Southeast Asia's biggest fuel importers, hopes to reduce its import bill by improving its ageing domestic refining infrastructure, but some projects have been delayed because of financing issues.

Pertamina hopes to soon finalize a framework agreement with Oman's Overseas Oil and Gas LLC (OOG) and Cosmo Oil International, a trading unit of Japan's Cosmo Energy Holdings , to develop the Bontang facility, Mokobombang said on Tuesday.

The Oman government will provide financial support for the project, in which Pertamina expects to take an initial 10 percent stake, Mokobombang said. Pertamina would have the rights to supply 20 percent of the crude for the refinery, and Oman the remainder, he said.

Pertamina plans to reach a final investment decision on the 300,000 bpd Bontang grass roots refinery project in mid-2020, he said. "Hopefully in 2025 this refinery will be operational," Mokobombang told reporters.

A spokeswoman for Cosmo Energy Holdings in Japan said only that the company has not made an investment decision on the project yet. OOG is "active in the development of a number of energy related projects," including a refinery project in Indonesia, it said on its website. OOG could not be reached for comment.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), expanded 0.5 percent in January on a three-month moving average (3MMA) basis and 0.7 percent on an unadjusted basis, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

This follows an upwardly revised 3MMA gain of 0.7 percent in December and 0.5 percent in November. The CAB is up 4.0 percent compared to a year earlier, indicating a robust economy well into the third-quarter of 2018.

The Chemical Activity Barometer has four primary components, each consisting of a variety of indicators: 1) production; 2) equity prices; 3) product prices; and 4) inventories and other indicators.

In January, following some weather-related stagnation, production-related indicators showed solid improvement. Strong trends in construction-related resins, pigments, and performance chemistry all suggested further gains in housing activity. Plastic resins used in packaging and in other consumer and institutional applications also improved, suggesting continued consumer confidence. A robust stock market rally continued to push equity prices higher, while product prices and inventories were also positive.

The diffusion index expanded to 71 percent. This index marks the number of positive contributors relative to the total number of indicators monitored.

The Chemical Activity Barometer is a leading economic indicator derived from a composite index of chemical industry activity. The chemical industry has been found to consistently lead the U.S. economy's business cycle given its early position in the supply chain, and this barometer can be used to determine turning points and likely trends in the wider economy. Month-to-month movements can be volatile so a three-month moving average of the barometer is provided. This provides a more consistent and illustrative picture of national economic trends.

Applying the CAB back to 1912, it has been shown to provide a lead of two to fourteen months, with an average lead of eight months at cycle peaks as determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The median lead was also eight months. At business cycle troughs, the CAB leads by one to seven months, with an average lead of four months. The median lead was three months. The CAB is rebased to the average lead (in months) of an average 100 in the base year (the year 2012 was used) of a reference time series. The latter is the Federal Reserve's Industrial Production Index.

The CAB comprises indicators relating to the production of chlorine and other alkalies, pigments, plastic resins and other selected basic industrial chemicals; chemical company stock data; hours worked in chemicals; publicly sourced, chemical price information; end-use (or customer) industry sales-to-inventories; and several broader leading economic measures (building permits and new orders). Each month, ACC provides a barometer number, which reflects activity data for the current month, as well as a three-month moving average. The CAB was developed by the economics department at the American Chemistry Council.
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