INEOS shutdown of Scottish refinery may cut 45% of UK oil production

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ineos Group Holdings is shutting the 210,000 bpd Grangemouth oil refinery and petrochemical site before a strike this weekend that could halt 45 % of the United Kingdom’s crude production, said Hydracarbonprocessing.

The company is progressively stopping units before a 48- hour industrial action planned by Unite union workers, scheduled to begin on October 20.

"We’re currently going through a safe shutdown of the site," Richard Longden, a spokesman for Ineos, said by phone from London. “The units will be brought to a cold status by the time the strike action starts."

Grangemouth workers held a two-day strike in April 2008 that cut North Sea oil output and disrupted fuel supplies across Scotland. The site supplies power and steam to BP's neighboring Kinneil processing plant, which handles oil from the company’s Forties Pipeline System gathered from more than 80 offshore fields. FPS is scheduled to load 387,000 bpd of crude in October.

Union representatives and Ineos will meet for talks mediated by the United Kingdom’s Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service after discussions ended without resolution, Unite said in a statement. The discussions are scheduled in Glasgow, Scotland, according to the United Kingdom Department of Energy and Climate Change.

"We’re in touch with Ineos to establish the possible impact of the shutdown," Robert Wine, a London-based spokesman for BP, said by phone. Operations at the Kinneil plant will depend on the outcome of negotiations between Ineos and the union, he said.

Forties output averaged 382,000 bpd this year, according to loading programs obtained by Bloomberg News. The United Kingdom’s average crude production was 850,000 bpd this year, data from the International Energy Agency show. Forties is the most abundant of four crude grades that make up the Dated Brent benchmark used to price more than half the world’s crude. The others are Brent, Oseberg and Ekofisk.

"We have been monitoring the situation very closely," Cameron Ramos, a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, said by phone from London. "This isn’t something that has come as a surprise."

The Grangemouth refinery is jointly owned by Ineos Group Holdings and PetroChina, while Ineos is the sole owner of the petrochemical site.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Corp. shut down an oil pipeline system at the Port of Long Beach, Calif. Monday after discovering a crude leak in the area, a company spokesman confirmed, said Nasdaq.

The THUMS oil pipeline system, which connects to the company's refinery in Torrance, Calif., was taken offline "in an abundance of caution" after an oil leak was discovered in the vicinity of the system, according to ExxonMobil spokesman Aaron Stryck. The oil has been contained, Mr. Stryck said, without quantifying how much oil was released. ExxonMobil has not yet confirmed the leak's source and as of Monday night was working to determine how much oil had been spilled.

The THUMS pipeline delivers crude oil produced in Long Beach Harbor to ExxonMobil's refinery in Torrance, Calif., which can process up to 155,000 barrels per day of crude.

The leak did not have an impact on any waterways, according to a filing with the California Emergency Management Agency.

As MRC reported earlier, last year, Exxon Mobil announced plans to increase its petrochemical manufacturing output through the expansion of its Baton Rouge and Port Allen plants in Louisiana. A company official said that the expansion project will begin by the end of this year and is expected to be completed by 2014. The USD215 mln expansion project will take the company's capital expenditures in Louisiana to over USD1 billion in three years.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3 percent of the world's oil and about 2 percent of the world's energy.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- INEOS, a privately owned multinational chemicals company, has announced that Grangemouth is financially distressed, according to the company's statement.

The industrial action called by Unite the Union has inflicted significant further damage on the company.

INEOS will put a proposal to the workforce today and expects a response on Monday, after the weekend.

The company will review its position with its shareholders on Tuesday.

As MRC informed earlier, Ineos has invited the Unite union for talks in a bid to prevent workers at Ineos’s Grangemouth, United Kingdom operations from going on 48-hour strike on 20 October. These talks were intended to find a way to resolve the dispute over Stephen Deans, an employee representative on the site and to prevent strike action planned by the union. Ineos said it has started the process of taking the plants down in anticipation of the strike.

INEOS was extremely disappointed at the lack of progress at Monday's ACAS meeting following Unite's refusal to engage in any discussions about protecting North Sea oil flows and fuels for Scotland. The company was also extremely disappointed that the Unite delegation insisted on including Stephen Deans, who is himself the subject of the dispute, in its list of attendees.

INEOS Group Limited is a privately owned multinational chemicals company consisting of 15 standalone business units, headquartered in Rolle, Switzerland and with its registered office in Lyndhurst, United Kingdom. It is the fourth largest chemicals company in the world measured by revenues (after BASF, Dow Chemical and LyondellBasell) and the largest privately owned company in the United Kingdom.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- LyondellBasell, one of the major petrochemical global producers and the world's largest maker of polypropylene, has announced the opening of the 70,000-square-foot Houston Technology Center to develop process technologies and chemical catalysts for its Intermediates and Derivatives business, reported the company on its site.

Research and development activities at the facility will focus on improving catalyst and process technologies to reduce manufacturing costs, improve yields, and lower capital costs of new construction for LyondellBasell's global chemicals business. Proprietary technologies supported at the site include propylene oxide, butanediol and derivatives, glycols and glycol ethers, acetyls, olefins and solvents.

Manufacturing plants supported by the center include three Houston-area facilities in Channelview, Bayport and La Porte, Texas, as well as Botlek and Maasvlakte, Netherlands, Fos-sur-Mer, France, and a joint venture in Ningbo, China.

The center will employ approximately 80 people, 22 of whom relocated from the company's former facility near Philadelphia, with the balance hired locally. The new facility is adjacent to the company's largest US manufacturing complex in Channelview, east of Houston.

"The Houston Technology Center will support research to improve our current processes and catalysts and provide the capability to develop further technology enhancements in support of LyondellBasell's intermediate and derivatives business," said Massimo Covezzi, senior vice president of Research and Development.

LyondellBasell is among the industry leaders in chemicals and polymers technology. The company has more than 5,000 patents and patent applications worldwide covering manufacturing processes, products and catalysts.

Other LyondellBasell R&D centers include Cincinnati, Ohio, which focuses on polyolefin product application and development in North America; Frankfurt, Germany, focused on polyethylene and metallocene catalysts; and Ferrara, Italy, focusing on polypropylene and Ziegler-Natta catalysts.

As MRC wrote previously, LyondellBasell will raise its ethylene capacity in North America by 18% in coming years through several debottlenecking projects. Locations where ethylene capacity will be expanded include crackers in Corpus Christi, La Porte and Channelview, Texas, according to the company. The projects are scheduled to be finished in 2014 and 2015. Besides, ZapSibNeftekhim L.L.C, a fully owned subsidiary of SIBUR, decided to select the Spheripol process technology from LyondellBasell for a new 500 KT per year single-line polypropylene (PP) plant to be built in Tobolsk, Russia Federation and OAO Nizhnekamskneftekhim, the largest petrochemical company in Russia, has selected the company's Spheripol process technology for a new 400 KT per year single-line polypropylene (PP) plant to be built in Nizhnekamsk, Russia Federation.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, LyondellBasell is one of the world's largest plastics, chemical and refining companies. LyondellBasell manufactures products at 58 sites in 18 countries. The company produces chemicals, fuels, and polymers used for packaging, clean fuels, durable textiles, medical applications, construction materials, and automotive parts. LyondellBasell is also a leading licensor of polypropylene and polyethylene technologies. The more than 250 polyolefin process licenses granted by LyondellBasell are twice that of any other polyolefin technology licensor.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Stable work of Russian producers and weakening demand in the domestic market reduced imports of high density polyethylene (HDPE) to Russia by 21% in January-September of this year, according to MRC report DataScope.

HDPE imports of HDPE to Russia fell to 230,000 tonnes in the first nine months of this year compared to 290,000 tonnes in the same period in 2012.
Stable work of Russian producers (Stavrolen stood idle because of an accident in October 2012; long-time maintenance works at Gazprom neftekhim Salavat) and a decrease in demand in certain sectors of consumption (production of pipes, cables and wires) have greatly reduced the dependence of the Russian market from imports.

The structure of imports by sector consumption in the first nine months was as follows. Imports of pipe HDPE fell to 57,000 tonnes against 83,000 tonnes year on year. Major market participants said weak demand for finished plastic pipes (due to the reduced investment in infrastructure) and stronger supply of polyethylene from Russian producers have resulted in imports decline.

External supplies of film and blow moulding HDPE totalled about 37,400 tonnes and 27,600 tonnes, respectively, against 76,600 tonnes and 36,100 tonnes in the previous year.

At the same time, imports of extrusion (for the coatings of large diameter steel pipes) and injection moulding HDPE increased to 57,300 tonnes and 40,000 tonnes in the first nine months of this year, against 45,900 tonnes and 36,100 tonnes respectively, a year earlier.

MRC