Repsol completes acquisition of Talisman

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Spanish oil company Repsol has completed the acquisition of Canada’s Talisman Energy, said Offshoreenegytoday.

Talisman revealed in December 2014 it had been approached by Repsol with an intention to either acquire some of its assets or to takeover the whole company.

Days later, the two companies entered into a definitive agreement under which Repsol proposed to acquire 100% of the shares of the Canadian company for USD8.3 billion, plus assumed debt of USD4.7 billion.

Talisman’s shareholders approved the proposed agreement in February 2015 and Repsol later announced that the takeover would become effective in May.

Under the arrangement, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Repsol has acquired all of the outstanding common shares of Talisman at a price of USD8.00 per share and all of the outstanding preferred shares of Talisman at a price of CDN USD25.1093 (representing CDN USD25.00 plus accrued and unpaid dividends) per share.

With the completion of the arrangement, the common shares will be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange, and the preferred shares will be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange. In addition, Repsol said that new organizational structure has been approved for the company resulting from the integration of Talisman.

Antonio Brufau, Repsol CEO, said: "Our integration with Talisman makes us one of the biggest publically-traded Oil & Gas companies in the world."

Repsol S.A is an integrated Spanish oil and gas company with operations in 28 countries. The bulk of its assets are located in Spain.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sinopec Yangzi Petrochemical is in plans to shut a linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant for maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in China informed that the plant is planned to be shut in end-July 2015. It is expected to remain off-stream for around one month.

Located at Nanjing in China, the plant has a production capacity of 200,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, on March 26, 2015, Sinopec Cangzhou Petrochemical has shut its refinery for maintenance turnaround. It is planned to remain off-stream for around two months. Located at Cangzhou in Hebei province of China, the plant has a production capacity of 2.5 million mt/year.

Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest scale integrated energy and chemical companies with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. Its refining and ethylene capacity ranks No.2 and No.4 globally. The Company has 30,000 sales and distribution networks of oil products and chemical products, its service stations are now ranked third largest in the world.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Huntsman Corp. has awarded an engineering, procurement and construction management contract to Jacobs Engineering for an expansion project at Huntsman's world-scale polyetheramine facility at Jurong Island, Singapore, reported Apic-online.

The USD100-million expansion project involves doubling polyetheramines capacity to 50,000 t/y from 25,000 t/y. The facility will be backward integrated to produce poly-ethers from locally sourced feedstock. Construction is expected to begin by mid-2015 and be completed in the second half of 2016.

Under the contract, for which a value was not dis-closed, Jacobs is responsible for detailed engineering and design, procurement of major equipment and management of construction services for the project.

"Huntsman expects demand for polyetheramines to grow significantly over the next decade, particularly in the Asia Pacific market," Jacobs noted.

As MRC wrote previously, Huntsman plans to reduce its titanium dioxide (TiO2) capacity by approximately 100,000 tons, representing 13% of Huntsman's European TiO2 capacity. The plan will generate approximately USD35 million of annual savings.

Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated chemicals with 2013 revenues of over USD11 billion. Huntsman is a global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated chemicals. The company's operating companies manufacture products for a variety of global industries, including chemicals, plastics, automotive, aviation, textiles, footwear, paints and coatings, construction, technology, agriculture, health care, detergent, personal care, furniture, appliances and packaging.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the world’s largest oil exporter, is planning to spend between USD70 billion and USD80 billion on overseas acquisitions and investments during the next five years, three people with knowledge of the matter said, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The investment is part of the state-owned company’s target of spending USD150 billion at home and internationally through 2019, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Saudi Aramco, as the company is known, will focus on Asia, particularly China and Korea, they said.

Saudi Aramco is expanding in refining and petrochemicals and seeking to boost ties with Asia as part of its ambition to become both the world’s largest oil and chemicals producer by the end of the decade. Last year it bought a USD2 billion stake in S-Oil Corp., South Korea’s third-largest oil refiner.

The company has joint-venture plants in China, owns stakes in refining businesses in South Korea, Japan and the US and markets its crude and refined products globally.

Aramco secured a USD10 billion loan in March that could be used to fund potential acquisitions, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg at the time. The company didn’t respond to requests for comment.

As MRC informed earlier, German chemical company Lanxess is discussing the sale of a minority stake in its synthetic-rubber unit with potential buyers including Saudi Arabian Oil Co.

Saudi Aramco, officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, is a Saudi Arabian national oil and natural gas company based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco's value has been estimated at up to USD10 trillion in the Financial Times, making it the world's most valuable company. Saudi Aramco has both the largest proven crude oil reserves, at more than 260 billion barrels, and largest daily oil production.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A fire broke out on Sunday at Shell's refining and petrochemical complex in Wesseling, Germany, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing with reference to the company's confirmation on Monday.

"Yesterday at 2:20 p.m., a fire broke out in a furnace in the Wesseling site of Rhineland Refinery, with strong smoke emissions," a Shell spokesperson said on Monday. "Nobody has been injured."

"The fire was extinguished at 9:11 p.m. Air quality checks conducted by the professional fire brigade were negative," the spokesperson said.

Local media reports said the fire had broken out in the olefins cracking unit.

"We do not comment on the operational status of affected units," the spokesperson said. "But to make it clear: (there is) no total shutdown of the Wesseling site."

The Wesseling cracker has capacity to produce 260,000 tpy of ethylene, according to news reports, while the refinery can process 141,000 bpd.

The cause of the fire is not yet known. An investigation is underway.

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
MRC