Vietnam's largest refinery Nghi Son says major maintenance completed

Vietnam's largest refinery Nghi Son completed major maintenance at the facility on Wednesday, one week ahead of schedule, the company said.

The 200,000-barrel-per-day Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical will resume sales of refined fuels from Thursday, the company said in a statement.

Nghi Son is 35.1% owned by Japan's Idemitsu Kosan Co , 35.1% by Kuwait Petroleum, 25.1% by Vietnam's state oil firm PetroVietnam and 4.7% by Mitsui Chemicals Inc.

The company said all of the refinery's units had been restarted, adding that it will increase operating capacity of the entire plant in the coming days.

In August, an official document signed by Kuwait's oil minister and reviewed by Reuters showed the refinery could incur a $1 billion loss this year, due to price volatility, increasing interest payments for loans and the maintenance shutdown.

We remind, Honeywell and GranBio Technologies announced that they will combine Honeywell’s ethanol to jet technology with GranBio’s cellulosic ethanol AVAP technology to produce carbon neutral SAF from biomass residues at GranBio’s forthcoming U.S. demonstration plant. GranBio’s patented AVAP process converts biomass, including forest and agricultural residues, to pure low-cost, low-carbon-intensity sugars, lignin, and nanocellulose.

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Fire broke out at a unit at Shell's chemicals manufacturing site on Jurong Island, Singapore, with no injuries reported, said the company.

The fire which broke out at around 03:00 hours local time on 10 October has been put out, the spokesperson said. "Our emergency response team is currently monitoring the situation closely," the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson did not specify which unit was affected by the fire. Industry sources said that the fire could have affected styrene monomer (SM) production at the site, but it was unclear if any units were shut.

The upstream 1.15m tonne/year cracker remains operational, they said. Shell runs two SM lines at the Jurong Island site which have a total production capacity of 1.02m tonnes/year, according to the ICIS Supply & Demand database.

We remind, A massive fire broke out at a plastic waste site in the Croatian city of Osijek, Reuters said.
The city’s Civil Protection Directorate said that the fire erupted in the early hours of Wednesday, prompting firefighters to extract 1,500 liters of sodium lye and 1,000 liters of hydrochloride from the site. A total of 74 firefighters and 33 fire engines are involved in the fire extinguishing operation and citizens have been warned against the harmful effects of the gases produced by the burning plastic.

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A subsidiary of Hengli Petrochemical, China's privately controlled refiner and petrochemical producer, has won a license to supply bonded marine fuel in Zhoushan, the country's bunker hub, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Hengli joins more than a dozen licensed bunker fuel suppliers in the free trade zone of Zhoushan of Zhejiang province.

Hengli operates a 400,000 barrels per day refinery in the northeastern port city of Dalian.

Zhoushan, which has the ambition to rival Singapore the world's top bunker center, last year supplied a record of over 6 million tons of marine fuel to vessels plying on international voyages.

We remind, Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces it has become the first industrial automation customer headquartered in Asia to join Avelia, a blockchain book-and-claim platform for SAF. Launched in June 2022, Avelia was developed by Shell and Accenture, with support from the Energy Web Foundation together with American Express Global Business Travel.

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BASF invests in the production of emollient specialties at its Dusseldorf site targeted for skin and sun protection products, said the company.

A new reactor and upgrade of the distillation units enable an expansion of production capacity to meet the increasing demand for these specialty products. The new facilities are scheduled to go into operation in the third quarter of 2025.

Emollients bind and maintain skin moisture and improve the sensory properties of a care product. The need for special emollients for formulations that for instance enable silicone-free skin care and octocrylene-free sun protection continues to increase in Europe. BASF's production site in Dusseldorf, Germany, specializes in ingredients for the cosmetics and personal care industries and already offers the most comprehensive portfolio for emollients. Here, the capacity is now being expanded in a targeted manner to meet growing market demand with an investment in the mid double-digit million range.

Mary Kurian, President of BASF’s Care Chemicals division, about the project: "BASF sees the growth potential in specialties for the personal care industry in Europe and, as the market leader, we are consistently investing to support this growth with our customers."

Dusseldorf is home to BASF's third-largest site in Europe and is also the world's largest and the key BASF site for the production and development of cosmetic ingredients.

We remind, BASF is to produce cathode active materials (CAM) from recycled metals in Battle Creek, Michigan, for use in lithium-ion batteries produced by Nanotech Energy. The two companies will partner with American Battery Technology Company (ABTC), a lithium-ion battery recycling company, and TODA Advanced Materials, which has experience in producing specialised CAM precursor and metal hydroxide.

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TotalEnergies has announced the construction of a new mechanical recycling unit for plastic waste at its Grandpuits site in France, said the company.

The new unit can produce 30,000 tonnes/y of high value-added compounds containing up to 50% recycled plastic material once it become operational in 2026. A specific centre will also be created that will provide technical assistance to customers and develop new products.

In Sep 2020, the company announced a net zero goal by 2050. The company launched a project to transform its Grandpuits industrial site into a "zero-crude" project, which is estimated to cost over EUR 500 M. The biorefinery's output capacity will be 210,000 tonnes/y by 2025 and 285,000 tonnes/y by 2027. The biomethane unit will prevent emission of around 20,000 tonnes/y of CO2.

The unit will have a capacity of 80 GWh. The site will also have two recycling units, one for advanced recycling with a capacity to process 15,000 tonnes/y of waste, and another a mechanical recycling unit. The Grandpuits site houses a large solar farm that has been generating 31 GWh/y of green electricity since Jul 2023.

We remind, Borealis and TotalEnergies celebrate the start-up of their Baystar joint venture’s new 625,000 metric ton-per-year Borstar® polyethylene (PE) unit, which more than doubles the current production capacity at Baystar’s site in Pasadena, Texas.

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