Lubrizol completes acquisition of Weatherford oilfield chemicals and drilling fluid businesses

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The Lubrizol Corporation has completed the acquisition in the United States and Canada of Weatherford International’s global oilfield chemicals business, known as Engineered Chemistry and its United States drilling fluids business, known as Integrity Industries, reported the company on its site.

Closings in the rest of the world will occur throughout 2015. The transaction was announced on December 1, 2014.

With the close of the transaction, Engineered Chemistry and Integrity Industries, along with Lubrizol’s legacy energy and water business and Berkshire Hathaway portfolio company, Lubrizol Specialty Products, Inc., will form Lubrizol Oilfield Solutions, a new business segment for the company. Lubrizol Oilfield Solutions joins the company’s other business segments, Lubrizol Additives and Lubrizol Advanced Materials. Within this new segment, Engineered Chemistry and Integrity Industries will operate substantially as they do now.

As MRC informed before, in April 2014, Lubrizol Corporation announced the groundbreaking for a new TempRite chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC) compounding plant in Dahej, India. Construction of this plant is an integral component of the company's previously announced USD400 million global expansion of its resin and compounding manufacturing capacity.

The Lubrizol Corporation, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is an innovative specialty chemical company that apart from its production develops and supplies technologies to customers in the global transportation, industrial and consumer markets. Lubrizol is providing innovative solutions for its customers high-performance application needs and remains committed to ongoing investment in its CPVC capabilities that support future growth. With headquarters in Wickliffe, Ohio, Lubrizol owns and operates manufacturing facilities in 17 countries, as well as sales and technical offices around the world. Founded in 1928, Lubrizol has approximately 8,000 employees worldwide. Revenues for 2013 were USD6.4 billion.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- In a bid to stop the city's roads being clogged up with beer lorries, Bruges is to re-route its beer underground, through 3km of pipeline capable of carrying 6,000 litres per hour, as per Euronews.

In addition to being a Willy Wonkian approach to beer transport and enabling the use of the quite wonderful measurement of litres per hour with regards to beer, the system will allow for around 500 tankers to be taken off the road.

Inevitably there are some fears that people will try to tap off the pipeline, but its creators are confident the beer will be secure.

"This is stronger than a steel pipe. It’s really very strong. So we are quite confident that no leaks or illegal tapping points will be there," brewery owner Xavier Vanneste told EuroNews.

The pipe will stretch from De Halve Maan brewery to a bottling plant 4km away, with beer travelling at about 15 to 20km/h and reaching the plant in as little as 10 minutes.

There are many beers named after Bruges, though the only breweries remaining along with De Halve Maan are Brugse Zot and Brugse Straffe Hendrik.

Construction on the pipeline will begin later this year.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- DFE Chemical is likely to restart its polystyrene (PS) plant following a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in the Philippines informed that the plant is likely to be restarted in late January. It was shut in late December 2014 for maintenance turnaround.

Located in Manila, Philippines, the plant has a production capacity of 30,000 mt/year.

We remind that, as MRC informed earlier, Hong Kong Petrochemical is likely to shut its PS plant in Hong Kong for maintenance turnaround in Q1, 2015. Located in Yuen Long industrial estate, Hong Kong, the plant has a production capacity of 140,000 mt/year.

Besides, in September 2014, Styron Hong Kong, an affiliate of Styron, the global materials company and manufacturer of plastics, latex and rubber, shut down its PS plant in Hong Kong for a one-month maintenance turnaround. Located in Hong Kong, the plant has a production capacity of 200,000 mt/year.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co. (EMRE) has signed an agreement with Arisdyne Systems to jointly develop and commercialize new applications based on Arisdyne’s controlled flow cavitation (CFC) technology for the production of petroleum-based fuels, lubricants and chemicals, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

CFC can provide high shear forces used for superior mixing and creation of localized thermal energy.

"EMRE and Arisdyne are combining our petroleum processing technology to produce a cavitation process to address today's challenges across our upstream, downstream and chemicals business lines, and improve today’s global petroleum processing," said Vijay Swarup, vice president, research and development at EMRE.

Arisdyne Systems Inc. is a provider of hydrodynamic cavitation equipment and specializes in designing small footprint devices that utilize its patented controlled flow hydrodynamic cavitation and applies its CFC technology to achieve exception sheer forces for superior mixing or particle size reductions in numerous applications including vegetable oil refining, fuel ethanol production and wastewater processing.

EMRE is ExxonMobil’s global fuels and lubricants research and development arm. Additionally, EMRE also licenses technologies that provide significant value while improving safety, reliability and energy efficiency.

As MRC wrote before, Foster Wheeler announced that a subsidiary of its global engineering and construction business has been awarded an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract by ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical (Esso) to upgrade its Antwerp refinery in Belgium.

ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Oman International Petrochemical Industry Co. (Ompet) has signed an agreement with Sohar Port and Freezone in which Ompet will lease land at the Sohar Industrial Port in Oman for the production of purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), as per GV.

Ompet, a joint venture of Oman Oil Co. (50 %), LG Corp. (30 %) and Takamul Investment Co. (20 %), will have the capacity to produce 1.1-million t/y of PTA to be used as feedstock for the production of 250,000 t/y of PET. Earlier reports said the project would produce 500,000 t/y of PET and be built in two phases.

The Ompet plant will be built adjacent to Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Co. (Orpic) and will utilize all of the paraxylene produced by Orpic. Operations are expected to begin in 2016.

We remind that, as MRC wrote before, in December 2013, Oman Oil Company (OOC), a commercial company wholly owned by the Government of the Sultanate of Oman, successfully concluded the acquisition of Oxea which was announced in October. The purchase price was not disclosed. Oxea is one of the largest global manufacturers of Oxo chemicals. With the acquisition, OOC aims to become a vertically integrated global chemical leader in the downstream industry
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