KBR & BIV Forming Malaysian JV

MOSCOW (MRC) -- KBR said it has signed a joint venture agreement with BIV Builders for a standalone, self-sufficient, long-term joint venture in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as per Apic-online.

The joint venture, which will be named KBIV, will combine KBR's global experience and differentiated professional services and project delivery, with BIV's cost competitive and experienced resources, ensuring that the joint venture will deliver innovative and competitive engineering, project delivery and asset program management solutions, KBR explained.

Also, by utilizing KBR's Granherne subsidiary, KBIV can service the full spectrum of the hydrocarbons life-cycle in both the Malaysian domestic market, as well as highly selective regional opportunities, KBR added.

As MRC informed before, in March 2016, KBR announced that its SOCAR-KBR joint venture was awarded a significant project management consultancy (PMC) contract for the Heydar Aliyev Baku oil refinery modernization project in Azerbaijan. And in November 2016, KBR, Inc.’s JV with SOCAR was awarded a second program management consultancy contract for the Azerikimya Production Union of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan, which had signed two contracts with Technip Italy Nov. 5, as part of the project for modernization and reconstruction of the ethylene-polyethylene plant in Sumgayit.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces that its subsidiary, Yokogawa Electric Korea, has received an order to supply an analyzer package solution for the Liwa Plastics Industries Complex, which is being built for Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company (Orpic), a company owned and operated by the Oman government, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The Liwa Plastics Industries Complex is being built in Sohar, on Oman's northern coast. This package order is for 15 analyzer houses and associated analysis systems consisting of process analyzers and sampling instruments. The client is a JV between CB&I and CTCI Corporation, which is responsible for the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) of an approximately 800,000 tpy naphtha cracker and related utility facilities at this complex.

The analysis systems for this steam cracker and its off-site utility facilities will rely on Yokogawa GC8000 process gas chromatographs to separate mixed gases and volatile liquids into their respective components and measure their concentrations. A total of 75 GC8000 units have been ordered, and this is Yokogawa's largest single project order to date for this product.

Yokogawa Electric Korea will have overall responsibility for analyzer house fabrication, system integration and site commissioning services. As both Yokogawa Electric International and Yokogawa Europe Solutions B.V. have extensive experience in constructing analyzer houses, Yokogawa Electric International will manage the engineering, delivery, and commissioning of these Yokogawa solutions, and Yokogawa Europe Solutions B.V. will provide project execution support. The analyzer houses will be delivered by the third quarter of 2018, and the Liwa Plastics Industries Complex is scheduled to start operation in the first quarter of 2020.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Africa is in talks with China's Sinopec about its takeover of Chevron Corp's Cape Town refinery as it wants to ensure its production capacity is retained and enhanced, Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel said on Thursday, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Sinopec will pay almost USD1 B for a 75% stake in Chevron Corp's South African assets and its subsidiary in Botswana to secure its first major refinery in Africa, the companies announced in March.

"A key concern that government will raise in every major transaction like this is how to retain and expand our industrial capability and includes in this case, refinery capability," Patel told reporters before his budget vote speech in parliament.

Patel's ministry oversees competition authorities in Africa's most industrialized country.

South Africa has a history of taking its time over approving takeovers, partly because competition authorities have a public interest mandate to safeguard jobs in addition to an antitrust mandate to maintain competition.

In 2011, the regulator told US retailer Wal-Mart Stores not to cut jobs for two years following its acquisition of South African retailer Massmart, delaying implementation of the USD2.4 B deal by at least two months.

Last year, Anheuser-Busch InBev said it would invest USD77.3 MM to support small South African farmers as part of concessions agreed with the government to secure regulatory approval for its USD100 billion-plus takeover of SABMiller.

Patel did not go into details of the Sinopec discussions, saying the deal with Chevron would still need to go for formal regulatory scrutiny.

As MRC reported before, China's Sinopec group, parent of Sinopec Corp, will invest USD29.05 billion to upgrade four refining bases between 2016 and 2020 to produce higher-quality fuels. Sinopec's upgrades come as China, the world's second-biggest oil consumer, is embracing more stringent fuel standards in its battle against pollution and suffering an overall glut in refining capacity.

Sinopec Corp. is one of the largest scale integrated energy and chemical company with upstream, midstream and downstream operations. Its principal business includes: exploring, developing, producing and trading crude oil and natural gas; producing, storing, transporting and distributing and marketing petroleum products, petrochemical products, synthetic fiber, fertilizer and other chemical products. Its refining capacity and ethylene capacity rank No.2 and No.4 globally. Sinopec listed in Hong Kong, New York, London and Shanghai in August 2001.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Investors are pushing oil giant Royal Dutch Shell to explain the finer details of its plan to link executives' bonus pay to lowering carbon emissions, urging more transparency as the world shifts away from fossil fuels, said Reuters.

Shell was hailed by investors as a pioneer among the world's biggest fossil fuel producers when it announced the policy to tie 10% of executives’ bonuses to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which will be voted on at a May 23 annual general meeting in the Hague.

But scrutinizing the small print, some investors want Shell to show how it will calculate the targets for lowering emissions in the new bonus scheme rather than provide the information retrospectively in its annual report.

"This is a good move by the company but we would like to see more," said Bruce Duguid, director in the stewardship team at Hermes Investment Management, which holds shares in Shell. He declined to say how he would vote next week.

Shell has been criticized for developing projects such as Canadian oil sands, one of the most energy intensive and polluting forms of exploration, although it has reduced its exposure to those developments this year.

"We would prefer to see public, pre-set greenhouse gas reduction targets using a methodology appropriate to the type of an emission," Duguid said.

"It could be an intensity target rather than an absolute emissions number but ideally set over a long period of time that is part of a long-term efficiency and carbon reduction plan," Duguid said.

Investors also urged Shell to include 100% of emissions from its operations in its remuneration policy. They note that the calculation does not encompass emissions from oil and gas production and only factors in polluting gases from refineries, chemical plants and gas flaring, accounting for roughly 60% of the total emissions.

"We would love to see that metric be expanded to cover the trickier issue of upstream emissions, from exploration and production. The more difficult issue of the carbon intensity of its reserves hasn't been addressed," said Matt Crossman of Rathbone Greenbank Investments, also a shareholder in Shell.

A Shell spokeswoman said the company was "working hard on reducing carbon intensity", adding it planned to disclose emission reduction targets retrospectively at the end of each year, the same as with annual bonuses. She declined to comment on why oil and gas production was not included in targets.

Shell, along with several of its peers including BP have called for a global pricing of carbon which it believes will help the transition to cleaner energy.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mammoet, the world’s largest service provider specializing in engineered heavy lifting and transport, completed heavy lifting, transportation and rigging activities at Chevron South Africa in Cape Town for their annual scheduled maintenance, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Megchem, an engineering company operating primarily in the oil, gas, power generation and energy related industries, contracted Mammoet for the refurbishment of a 350-t reactor dome, replacement of a 400-t atmospheric column and 400-t heat exchanger.

The shutdown started on schedule on Feb. 10 and all components had to be replaced within 41 days. With the shutdown happening during a windy time of year in Cape Town, special attention was paid to weather conditions.

The refurbishment of a heat exchanger column had to be executed with surgical precision as the structure around the column was extremely congested and left little room for maneuvering. The preparations to install the new column started immediately after removal of the old column using a 400Te crawler crane and a suitable assist crane for the top and tailing purposes of the column. The old column was directly installed on a conventional trailer for transportation to the demolition yard 26 km off site. To minimize impact on traffic, the column was transported in the early hours of the morning.

For the refurbishment of the reactor the crane had to be assembled in an extremely tight location and the new dome and cyclones were built next to the crane in a specially designed structure leading up to the shutdown period.
MRC