MOSCOW (MRC) -- Occidental Petroleum Corp (Oxy) said it was withdrawing staff and implementing storm precautions at their US Gulf of Mexico offshore facilities ahead of a brewing tropical storm, reported Reuters.
A weather disturbance over the Gulf of Mexico could become a tropical storm by Friday and take aim at the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts, the US National Weather Service said on Thursday.
“All of our facilities have plans to prepare for weather-related events and are implementing those procedures,” Occidental said on its website. It did not comment on production.
BP and Shell said they were monitoring the situation.
Tropical storm conditions could begin Friday along portions of the central Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Alabama/Florida border. Rainfall of up to 12 inches in isolated areas could hit the Gulf Coast and the Southern Appalachians, the National Weather Service said.
As MRC informed earlier, Chevron temporarily shut in production June 18 from two offshore Gulf of Mexico oil and gas platforms and evacuated some staff, ahead of a weather system that was expected to strengthen into a tropical storm and make landfall in southeast Louisiana.
We remind that Chevron Corp has restarted the 112,229 barrel-per-day (bpd) Pasadena, Texas, refinery night after completing a multi-unit overhaul that was extended because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire refinery was shut from mid-April, 2020, until mid-July, 2020 with the last units returning to production on Tuesday, 14 July. The overhaul was originally to finish in mid-June, but was extended to mid-July.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
MRC