US East Coast refiners profit on winter gasoline at expense of summer stocks

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The US East Coast gasoline market looks set to begin the summer driving season with fewer barrels in storage than last year, as refiners have been profiting by producing winter grade gasoline longer than usual, trading sources said, said Reuters.

Traders said the additional production of winter grade came because the price of butane, a key blending component for winter gasoline, has nearly halved in two months. That spurred traders and refiners to make more of the higher-volatility fuel that cannot be used in the summer.

US gasoline futures crack spreads, an indication of refining profits, remain at seven-year seasonal lows as inventories hover above the five-year average. Making the cheaper grade of fuel is one way to offset that.

However, there is a limited two-month window to make the trade work, so those who can get the blending components at the right prices will continue to blend winter grade, particularly as favorable economics to store the barrels fade, traders said.

Summer gasoline is harder and more expensive to produce than winter grade, which is why pump prices tend to rise with the heat. In 2016, a glut of inventory hammered refiners' margins and they started blending winter grade gasoline earlier than usual.

In the winter, when evaporation is less of a concern, gasoline is made with a higher Reid Vapor Pressure (RVP), a common measure of the volatility of gasoline, by blending butane into it.

Butane prices typically tend to fall in late February and March when blending demand tapers but this year rose to a two-year high early in February before dropping.

"Certainly last year for local refiners the economics were there to make summer grade early and that created an artificial surplus because summer grade gasoline was going into tanks before there was any consumption," said one East Coast trader who currently has sales lined up for the winter blend. "This year, there will certainly be less (summer grade) to start the summer season."

Typically, the switch to summer grade starts between late-March and mid-April as refiners come out of maintenance but if demand persists, they are expected to make the winter fuel for longer.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandates that summer-grade gasoline and reformulated gasoline be used in certain regions staring May 1 for refiners and terminals, and June 1 for gasoline retailers.

The market structure is also supportive of blending winter grade, as gasoline futures are in backwardaton, when prompt prices are higher than deferred prices, discouraging making and storing summer barrels. The front-month contract's premium to the second month rose to as much as 0.77 cents per gallon on Monday, flipping from a discount just last week.

US gasoline prices are about 16% higher than a year ago and are inching closer to a seasonal two-year high as inventories have begun drawing consistently.

Gasoline inventories in the East Coast region fell to 65.6 million barrels as of March 24, their lowest since late December, but are still at the highest seasonal level in at least seven years, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The EIA does not provide a break up of summer and winter blends in storage but traders believe most of the barrels are winter grade and will draw down over the next few weeks.

The East Coast accounts for nearly a third of the country's total gasoline demand and includes New York Harbor, delivery point for the New York Mercantile Exchange contract. However, the move to keep producing winter barrels could backfire if demand peters out and refiners could get stuck with gasoline that then would not be legal for sale until September.

"There's a pretty limited window to do this ... it will be opportunistic," said Robert Campbell, head of oil products markets at consultancy Energy Aspects. "It does make summer look a little better (for refiners)."
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Alfa Laval has won an order to supply Alfa Laval Packinox heat exchangers to a refinery in West Africa. The order, booked in the Welded Heat Exchangers unit of the Energy Division late March, has a value of approximately SEK 55 million and delivery is scheduled for 2017 and 2018, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The order comprises the delivery of compact heat exchangers for energy recovery in a chemical process, where low octane refinery naphthas are converted into high-octane liquid products.

"This is the third Packinox order that we have booked within a short period of time," said Susanne Pahlen Aklundh, President of the Energy Division. "These reliable and highly energy-efficient products play a vital role in recovering and saving energy and are therefore well-suited for the energy-intense refinery and petrochemical industries."
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has shut down its polypropylene (PP) plant for maintenance, reported Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source informed that the plant was shut recently for a maintenance turnaround. The plant is likely to remain shut for around 25 days.

Located at Hazira near Surat in Gujarat, the PP plant has a production capacity of 600,000 mt/year.

As MRC informed previously, RIL has delayed the start-up of its new monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant until Q2 2017. The company scheduled to commence operations at the plant in Q2 2017. As per the earlier plans, the plant was to be started in December 2016. Located at Jamnagar, Gujarat in India, the plant has a production capacity of 750,000 mt/year.

Reliance Industries is one of the world's largest producers of polymers. The company is engaged in a wide range of activities, ranging from oil and gas production to production of polyester and polymer goods, including the production of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and textiles.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- In September, police investigating a wave of killings in the northern Rio de Janeiro suburbs followed a tip to the isolated scrubland near the massive Duque de Caxias oil refinery, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Police presumed the killings were linked to turf battles between criminal gangs in the run-up to municipal elections the following month. They found a different explanation buried beneath the grass: a system of tubes to siphon fuel from underground pipelines leading from the refinery, owned by state-run oil company Petrobras.

Some of the killings, police said, were part of a power struggle between rival gangs earnings millions of dollars a year from stealing crude oil, diesel and gasoline and selling it on a thriving black market.

The discovery highlighted a fast-growing criminal enterprise in Brazil's oil heartland, between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. From just one recorded incident in 2014, the number of thefts and attempted thefts from Petrobras rose to 14 in 2015 -- before jumping five-fold to 73 last year, the company told Reuters.

The racket is part of a larger crime wave in Brazil, and especially Rio, amid the country's worst recession on record. Investigators believe the oil and fuel thefts were masterminded by the city's powerful militias -- often made up of retired or off-duty cops -- as they seek to move away from terror and violence to lower-profile crimes following a crackdown by authorities in recent years.

The thieves' methods range from hijacking tanker trucks to tapping the company's more than 11,000 km of pipelines -- and processing stolen crude at their own secret refineries. "Not even Petrobras knows exactly how much is being stolen," said Giniton Lages, the Rio police chief who led the investigation at Duque de Caxias. "It's a huge business, moving millions of reais."

While oil theft -- often with environmental damage from the accompanying spills -- is commonplace in regions like the Niger Delta of Nigeria, it has not traditionally been a problem in Brazil.

The thefts add to the steep challenges facing Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the Rio-based firm is formally known. Amid weak oil prices, the company is scaling back under new CEO Pedro Parente and trying to emerge from a USD100 MM pile of debt.

For the past three years, the state-run company has been hit by a sprawling investigation into corruption and political kickbacks in its dealings with construction firms. Police suspect corruption in the oil thefts as well. The taps and pipes near the Duque de Caxias refinery were so precisely engineered that investigators concluded the thieves must have had help from inside Petrobras.

"They knew what type of fuel was inside each pipe and what was the ideal point to place a tap without the change of pressure in the tube raising the attention of the company's security system," Lages said.

Petrobras, whose production of about 2.8 MMbpd makes it one of the world's top 10 oil companies, said it was working with police to identify any employees or ex-employees that may have been involved in the crimes.

"In 2016, there was a startling increase in theft from our pipelines," said Rodrigo Spagnolo, head of pipeline maintenance at Transpetro, Petrobras' transport subsidiary. The company, however, said the robberies had no material impact on its earnings. Petrobras reported revenues of USD81 B last year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Precision automotive molder Prism Plastics Inc. has been sold to a subsidiary of Marmon Engineered Components Co., according to an announcement from Altus Capital Partners, the investment firm that had owned Chesterfield, Mich.-headquartered Prism along with its founders since June 2014, said Plasticsnews.

Marmon is an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the publicly traded conglomerate headed by Warren Buffett. Under Altus ownership Prism has undertaken several growth initiatives, including the June 2016 acquisition of Tech Molded Plastics Inc. of Meadville, Pa. That move doubled Prism’s size and added in-house toolmaking capabilities.

In addition to that facility and its Chesterfield headquarters, Prism has manufacturing operations in Port Huron, Mich., and Harlingen, Texas.

Marmon Engineered Components Co. is a company of Marmon Holdings Inc., part of Berkshire Hathaway, that spans the business sectors of distribution services; industrial products; and tubing, fittings and wire products, of which Prism will be a part. Rodney Bricker will continue to lead Prism as president.

Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway bought Marmon in 2008. At the time, Marmon already had plastics holdings, including fastener makers Nylok Corp. of Macomb, Mich., and Nylok Canada Inc. of Brampton, Ontario; as well as several units that make polymer-insulated wire and cable products.

Terms of the Prism deal were not disclosed.

Prism, which was a Plastics News Processor of the Year finalist in 2014, had estimated 2015 sales of USD37 million according to PN's most recent survey of North American injection molders. That total did not include Tech Molded Plastics, which won the PN Processor of the Year award in 2013, and had estimated 2015 injection molding sales of USD18 million.
MRC