Qatargas conducts emergency exercise with state agencies

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Qatargas conducted a major emergency response exercise in collaboration with the Ministry of Interior, Qatar Petroleum, and various shareholders, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The exercise involved a simulated fire and a coordinated response from professional teams at a hydrocarbon storage tank in Ras Laffan Industrial City.

"We have been deliberate in our planning to include all necessary statewide resources to ensure readiness to respond to an incident that requires fully integrated, large-scale support to any industrial asset within the State of Qatar,” said Hamad Al-Duhaimi, Civil Defense Operations Director, Ministry of the Interior. “This training was a great opportunity for all responding organizations, and was a good test of our ability to operate under a unified command structure. It gave us the opportunity to enhance our overall ability to succeed in future deployments, particularly with respect to communications and pooling of resources."

The exercise included the deployment of response equipment, tested logistics, and validated command and control capability including the integration of all response organizations.

As it was written earlier, Qatar will merge state-owned liquefied natural gas producers Qatargas and RasGas Co Ltd.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- An affiliate of Saudi International Petrochemical Co (Sipchem) signed a contract with South Korea's eTEC E&C for work costing USD144.6 million to raise the efficiency of operations at its methanol plant in Jubail, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

International Methanol Co (IMC) is 65% owned by Sipchem, and a group of Japanese companies hold the rest, according to the bourse filing from Sipchem on Thursday.

The project is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Under the contract, eTec will be in charge of doing engineering, procurement and construction work for efficiency enhancement. Sipchem did not give further details but said this project is part of efforts to meet targets for the Saudi Energy Efficiency Center.

It has an annual production capacity of 967,000 t of methanol, according to Sipchem's website.

As MRC informed earlier, in 2014, Saudi International Petrochemical Co (Sipchem) commenced trial runs at a new ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA)/low density polyethylene (LDPE) swing plant.

Established in 1999, Saudi International Petrochemical Company (Sipchem) manufactures and markets methanol, butanediol, tetrahydrofuran, acetic acid, acetic anhydride, vinyl acetate monomer. Besides, it has launched several down-stream projects to manufacture ethylene vinyl acetate, low density polyethylene, ethyl acetate, butyl acetate, cross linkable polyethylene, and semi conductive compound that are scheduled to start in 2013.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and Royal Dutch Shell have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to conduct studies on Azadegan, Yadavaran and Kish oilfields in Iran, reported the Iranian oil ministry’s news agency Shana.

Noureddin Shahnazizadeh, managing director of the Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC) from NIOC and Hans Nijkamp from Shell inked the deal in the presence of NIOC Managing Director Ali Kardor on Wednesday.

Based on the cooperation document, Shell will assess development projects of the fields.

As MRC wrote before, in October 2016, Royal Dutch Shell signed a preliminary MOU with Iran’s National Petrochemical Co. (NPC) for cooperation in the petrochemical industry. Hans Nijkamp, the head of the department for Iran affairs at Royal Dutch Shell, said the signing of the MOU came after months of negotiations between the two companies.

Earlier this year, in March 2016, another world's pretrochemical major - Total Petrochemical - and NPC signed a MoU to build a petrochemical complex in Iran. Total sealed the cooperation agreement with NPC to build a petrochemical complex after signing a separate deal to buy 160,000 bpd of Iranian crude oil.

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

MOSCOW (MRC) -- LG Chem is in plans to shut its No. 1 and No. 2 styrene monomer (SM) plants for a maintenance turnaround, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in South Korea informed that the company has schedule to shut both the plants in March - April 2017 and are expected to remain off-line for a period of around 3 weeks.

Located at Yeosu in South Korea, the No. 1 SM plant has a production capacity of 200,000 mt/year and No. 2 SM plant has a production capacity of 300,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported before, in January 2016, LG Chem said it had decided to drop a plan to jointly build a USD4.2-billion petrochemical complex in Kazakhstan, citing a prolonged slump in oil prices and a sharp increase in facility investments. In 2011, the chemical company said it would construct the complex near the western Kazakh city of Atyrau as part of a 50-50 joint venture with two Kazakh companies. The plan involved building ethylene and PE plants with annual capacities of 840,000 tonnes and 800,000 tonnes, respectively. The project was announced in 2013.

LG Chem Ltd., often referred to as LG Chemical, is the largest Korean chemical company and is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. According to ICIS report, it is 15th biggest chemical company in the world in 2011. It has eight domestic factories and global network of 29 business locations in 15 countries. LG Chem is a manufacturer, supplier, and exporter of petrochemical goods, IT&E Materials and Energy Solutions.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Negotiations over prices of European polyvinyl chloride (PVC) for December shipments to the CIS countries began this week. Not all producers announced price cuts, despite lower ethylene prices, according to ICIS-MRC Price report.

The contract price of ethylene in Europe for December deliveries was settled down by EUR30/tonne from November, which decreased PVC production costs by an average of EUR15/tonne. Most producers had to reduce their export prices. At the same time, a producer, on the contrary, announced a price increase, citing the limited export quotas.

This week's negotiations over December shipments of suspension polyvinyl chloride (SPVC) to the CIS markets were held in the range of EUR735-790/tonne FCA, whereas November deals were done in the range of EUR715-810/tonne FCA.

In November, some customers reported limited export PVC quotas of producers from Hungary and Poland, there are no such problems in December. Producers from Germany and Sweden have restrictions on exports.
MRC