Axiall considers La. for USD3 billion ethane plant

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Axiall Corp. says it is considering building a USD3 billion ethane cracker and chemical plant somewhere in Louisiana, said Knoe.

The Atlanta-based chemical manufacturer says it could make a decision sometime early next year. Axiall would invest USD1 billion of its own money, while an unnamed partner would put in USD2 billion.

The plant could open in 2018, creating 225 permanent jobs.

Axiall says it wants to make more of its own ethane-based chemicals instead of buying them from others.

The company currently has Louisiana plants in Lake Charles and Plaquemines. Axiall was formed earlier this year when Georgia Gulf merged with part of PPG's chemicals business.

If built, the plant would be another in a wave of chemical investments in Louisiana, driven in part by cheap and abundant natural gas.

Several companies are also expanding ethylene capacity in the US and Canada. Producers are eager to take advantage of low-cost ethane feedstock, made available through the advent of shale gas. Among them are Sasol, Dow, Nova e.t.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Teknor Apex Asia Pacific Pte Ltd., a subsidiary of Teknor Apex Company, has completed a global restructuring of TPE brands and now combines all compounds for consumer product applications under the well-known Monprene brand, as per the company's press release.

It now embraces a much broader portfolio of TPE technologies that provide a vast array of consumer values.

Thus, Asian manufacturers of consumer products now have access to a range of thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) compounds whose unmatched versatility make it possible to enhance the appearance, utility, ergonomics, and shelf-appeal of a wide array of merchandise.

These Monprene compounds are produced at Teknor Apex facilities in Singapore, the United States, and the United Kingdom. As part of its introduction of the expanded Monprene range, Teknor Apex has created a new logo for the Monprene brand.

Existing applications of Monprene TPEs include hand tools, infant care products, kitchen utensils, personal hygiene items, sporting goods, wheels and casters, writing instruments, soft-touch over-moldings, and many other consumer products.

As the most diversified compounder of TPEs, Teknor Apex can formulate Monprene compounds based on any of four broad polymer families: 1) styrene block copolymers, including styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS), hydrogenated styrene-butadiene-styrene (SEBS), and hydrogenated styrene-isoprene/butadiene-styrene (SEEPS); 2) thermoplastic vulcanizates (TPVs); 3) olefinics, including blends of polypropylene or polyethylene with olefinic TPE or with olefin block copolymer (OBC); and 4) bondable TPEs that can be over-molded or coextruded with many polyolefin, styrenic, and engineering resins.

As MRC wrote previously, this summer, Teknor Apex Company introduced a new rigid vinyl compound with a specially developed UV-blocking formulation, which provides clarity for photobioreactor and other outdoor tubing, along with high gloss and toughness for weatherable profile applications.

Teknor Apex is one of the world's leading custom compounders headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA. The company produces PA compounds in the UK, the U.S.A., and Singapore. Teknor Apex is one of the world's leaders of specialty PVC compounds which are used in a wide range of applications from wire and cable to automotive, medical, consumer and industrial products. The company also produces thermoplastic elastomers, nylon, bioplastics, chemicals, specialty compounds.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroChina's USD6 bln refinery and petrochemical complex in Southwest China will be ready for trial production in weeks, more than a year later than originally touted due to repeated delays, as per officials in Reuters.

The start-up of the 200,000 barrels-per-day Sichuan facility is being closely watched as it is the first major refinery in China's landlocked southwest and will process crude from the remote Xinjiang region, as well as from Russia and Kazakhstan.

It will also be one of the two major new refineries the world's second's largest oil consumer is expected to bring online in 2014. The other is the 240,000-bpd Quanzhou refinery, with investment by state-run Sinochem Corp.

Quanzhou, in the southeastern province of Fujian, is expected to start in the first quarter of 2014, delayed from an original timeline of mid-2013.

Sichuan refinery was last expected to start trial production in late October, according to company officials. That was after several delays including one as local residents expressed concerns over safety following an earthquake in Sichuan in April.

The Sichuan plant has an affiliated petrochemical complex including an 800,000 tonne-per-year ethylene unit, which produces feedstock for making plastics and textiles. Officials did not specify if the petrochemical plant would start operating at the same time.

Tighter government scrutiny and growing public awareness of environmental and safety standards have over the past few years contributed to a slowing in China's refinery expansions, following more rapid development since the mid-1990s.

Plans for a USD13 billion refinery and petrochemical complex in east China - a joint investment by PetroChina, Royal Dutch Shell and Qatar Petroleum, have stalled over finding a suitable site.

As MRC reported before, this summer, Johnson Matthey Davy Technologies and The Dow Chemical announced that PetroChina Guangdong Petrochemical Company, a subsidiary of PetroChina selected LP Oxo technology to produce 2-ethylhexanol, normal butanol and iso butyraldehyde in its major petrochemical complex in Jieyang, Guangdong, China. The new LP Oxo unit, with a capacity of 85,000 metric tons of 2-ethylhexanol, 235,000 metric tons of normal butanol and 33,000 metric tons of iso-butyraldehyde on a yearly basis, will adopt JM Davy and Dow's LP Oxo SELECTOR 10 Technology with advanced liquid phase hydrogenation which features a high conversion of propylene to alcohols, low capital investment and easy operation.

PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia’s Gazprom Neft has said it expects to end the year with production up 4.3% to around 435 million barrels of oil. The Moscow-headquartered state oil player said it expected to raise capital expenditure by 32% to 278 billion rubles (USD8.44 billion) next year, said Upstreamonline.

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said that "modernisation of refineries, which will provide them with a leading position in the industry, as well as developing new regions, including the Arctic shelf, will be the key areas of the company’s further development".

The explorer’s capital outlay for this year came in less than expected at 210 billion rubles in an underspend put down by the company to the delay in auctions for the fields of the undistributed subsoil fund.

A third of next year’s capital spend will go to upstream projects in traditional areas of operation, with a focus on maintaining output at mature fields, unlocking hard-to-reach reserves and developing projects in the Orenburg region, Gazprom Neft said.

Major new production projects due for commissioning in the next three years include the Novoportovskoye and Messoyakha in the northern part of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, and international projects.

Exploration will concentrate on Eastern Siberia and Iraqi Kurdistan.

The company also predicted that oil production at its Prirazlomnoye field – the site of the so-called Arctic 30’s high-profile protest in September – would begin before the end of the month.

As MRC wrote before, Gazprom Neft has signed an agreement with France-based Total to form a joint venture to produce and sell modified bitumen and bitumen emulsions on the Russian market. Each partner will have a 50% stake in the joint venture, which will build a special production facility at Gazprom Neft's Moscow oil refinery.

Gazprom Neft, is the fourth largest oil producer in Russia and ranked third according to refining throughput. It is a subsidiary of Gazprom, which owns about 96% of its shares. The company is registered and headquartered in St. Petersburg after central offices were relocated from Moscow in 2011.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hong Kong Petrochemical is likely to shut its polystyrene (PS) plant for maintenance turnaround, reported Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Hong Kong informed that the plant is likely to be shut in early February 2014. It is likely to remain off-stream for around one month.

Located in Yuen Long industrial estate, Hong Kong, the plant has a production capacity of 140,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed earlier, Concern Stirol (Gorlovka), the only polystyrene producer in Ukraine, suspended its PS production in late October, having stopped its capacities for a month long maintenance works. The plant was shut down because of the shortage of styrene monomer (SM), the main feedstock. However, the plant has not resumed production of styrene polymers after an outage in October yet. Thus, PS was not produced in November in Ukraine.
MRC