Dow expands Polyurethanes Service Centers network

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Dow Polyurethanes, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company, has announced the opening of a new Polyurethanes Service Center in Romania, expanding its network of more than 20 sites for production, development and technical service across the EMEAI region, as per GV.

Located in Brasov County, the new centre is equipped with technical and commercial capabilities to serve customers in Romania, Bulgaria, and the wider Balkan region with polyurethane materials. According to the company, further network expansion plans are anticipated later this year with a similar centre due to open in Africa dedicated to support customer needs in the Middle East and Africa Region.

Speaking at the Brasov Service Center opening ceremony, Jon Penrice, Vice President Dow Polyurethanes Europe, Middle East, Africa and India (EMEAI), said: "Our new Service Center in Romania represents another building block of our strategy to support customer growth through unrivalled technical service and the development of customized solutions geared to local market needs. The new centre will play a pivotal role in taking collaboration with our customers to the next level, by bringing local expertise and new capabilities that will improve response times and accelerate technology innovation."

The new Polyurethanes Service Centers will help accelerate both existing and new opportunities in the Balkan, Middle East and Africa regions, improving the speed and efficiency of application development, said Dow. They will provide customers’ access to laboratory and equipment capabilities and tailored technical service, including product demonstrations, prototype development and mechanical testing of final materials. Additionally, the centres will provide training opportunities for customers and have warehousing capabilities for several polyurethane systems.

Claudiu Tuncu, Country Leader Dow Romania and Bulgaria, commented: "Romania is one of the most promising and fastest-growing markets in Central and Eastern Europe. By opening the Service Center in Brasov, Dow reinforces its commitment to helping grow Romania’s economy further in areas such as infrastructure development as well as building and construction. Moreover, Dow’s longstanding presence in Romania gives us the advantage of deep local knowledge and expertise in this market."

As MRC informed before, Dow Chemical's polyethylene (PE) expansion at its Freeport, Texas, complex is on track for a mid-2017 startup.

The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational chemical corporation. Dow is a large producer of plastics, including polystyrene, polyurethane, polyethylene, polypropylene, and synthetic rubber.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petrochemicals Industries Company (PIC), a subsidiary of the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, is planning to invest more than USD8 billion in several overseas petrochemical projects over the next five years, according to Kuwaiti media reports, as per Plastemart.

The projects include both setting up of new plants and expansion of existing ones jointly owned by PIC, as per Fibre2Fashion News Desk.

PIC would invest in a paraxylene (PX) plant in Bahrain, which would be jointly owned by PIC and the government-owned National Oil and Gas Authority of Bahrain, the reports said quoting PIC CEO Mohammed Al-Farhoud. PlC’s investment plans include construction of a 550,000 tpa propylene and polypropylene plant in Canada. This will be built as a joint venture with a local Canadian company.

PIC is also considering setting up of a 400,000 tpa polypropylene plant in South Korea. Investment is also being made by the PIC in a 750,000 tpa ethylene glycol plant in the US. For this plant, a contract was signed with Jacobs Engineering Group in October last year. The project is scheduled to be completed in October 2019. In addition to these, PIC is actively considering investment opportunities in other countries.

As MRC wrote previously, PIC and Pembina Pipeline (Calgary, AB, Canada) are evaluating the feasibility of a combined, world-scale propane dehydrogenation (PDH) and polypropylene (PP) production facility in Alberta, Canada.

PIC is a subsidiary of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and a producer of ammonia, urea fertilizer and polypropylene in Kuwait. In addition PIC is a joint venture partner with others in Kuwait involved in the production of Ethylene, Polyethylene , Ethylene Glycol , Styrene Monomer, Para-xylene, Benzene. PIC is a joint venture partner with others outside of Kuwait involved in the production of Ammonia, Methanol, Ethylene Glycol, and Polyethylene Terephthalate.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Indian state refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp sees itself better placed to buy overseas downstream assets once it becomes part of the country's top explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp, its chairman M. K. Surana said, reported Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The Indian cabinet on Wednesday cleared state-run ONGC to acquire the federal government's 51.1% in HPCL as New Delhi wants larger local oil firms to take on global rivals.

"When you go for overseas deals, you will get more leverage because of the size of the group," Surana told Reuters, adding the deals should also make 'economic and commercial sense'.

"Overall we will get the backing of bigger group."

HPCL has in the past tried to enter into fuel marketing in Fiji and Africa but none of the deals materialized.

India has a tiny presence in the overseas downstream sector. However, ONGC has acquired a number of foreign oil and gas exploration and production assets through its overseas investment arm - ONGC Videsh Ltd.

In the fiscal year to March ONGC made a net profit of USD277.8 MM compared to 6.2 B rupees for HPCL.

HPCL controls about 11% of India's overall 4.7 MMbpd refining capacity, far lower than its retail sales.

"We have a plate bigger than what we can chew, we are buying from other refiners," Surana added.

HPCL wants to subsume Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd, the refining arm of ONGC, because of "operational synergies." MRPL operates a 300-Mbpd refinery in southern India.

Last year HPCL sold about 35 MMt of refined products in the country through its vast retail network and had to buy about 10 MMt from other refiners including MRPL to meet the demand, he said.

"Standalone refinery does not make sense as their profits are determined by gross refining margins, inventory gain or losses...and the company is deprived of stable marketing margins," Surana added.

"It will unlock the value for MRPL shareholders as well."

HPCL currently has a stake of about 17% stake in MRPL.

The merger of MRPL and HPCL will depend on approval by the boards of the two companies. No timeline has been fixed for integration of the two companies, he added.

The government has not yet decided at what price it will sell HPCL's shares to ONGC. Surana feels that share price of his firm do not reflect the true 'intrinsic value' and should not be sold at a discount to market price.

As MRC said earlier, HPCL and gas utility GAIL (India) Ltd are looking for viability gap funding of 2,000 crore to set up a petrochemical plant at a cost of 32,000 crore at Kakinada.

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) is an Indian state-owned oil and natural gas company with its headquarters at Mumbai, Maharashtra and with Navratna status. HPCL has about 25% marketing share in India among PSUs and a strong marketing infrastructure. The Government of India owns 51.11% shares in HPCL and others are distributed amongst financial institutes, public and other investors.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PetroChina is last week unloading the first Chinese purchase of crude oil from US strategic petroleum reserves at a port in eastern China, according to shipping data and two industry sources, reported Reuters.

The move comes as China, the world's No.2 oil consumer, steps up imports from the Americas to diversify supply sources.

PetroChina unit, PetroChina International America Inc, bought the 550,000-bbl cargo of Bryan Mound sour crude in a sale from US strategic petroleum reserves in March for USD28.8 MM.

Supertanker Cosrising Lake, chartered by PetroChina, is unloading the US oil at Qingdao port in Shandong province this week, shipping data on Thomson Reuters Eikon showed.

The crude has an API gravity of 33.3 degrees and sulfur content of 1.41%, according to the US Department of Energy's website, similar in quality to Middle East grades such as Oman crude.

After discharging that cargo, the ship will unload close to 1 MMbbl of US Mars crude at Rizhao port for independent refiner Shandong Wonfull Petrochemical, an industry source said, citing Chinese port data. He declined to be identified as he was not authorised to speak with media.

The Mars cargo is not from US strategic reserves.

PetroChina declined to comment, while Wonfull could not be reached for comment.

More Asian refiners are turning to the Americas for oil after OPEC cuts tightened heavy crude supplies and as governments respond to a call from United States President Donald Trump to buy US oil and gas.

State-owned PetroChina is one of the key players moving Americas crude to Asia. It recently sold India that country's first US crude import via an Indian Oil Corp tender.

As MRC reported earlier, in late 2015, PetroChina, China's largest oil and gas producer, commissioned a new crude oil refinery in China. Located at Anning in Yunnan province of China, the refinery has a crude processing capacity of 260,000 bpd.

PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The US Treasury Department on Thursday said it was fining global oil company Exxon Mobil Corp $2 MM for violating sanctions on Russia in May 2014, as per Reuters.

The heads of the company's US subsidiaries signed eight documents between May 14 and May 23, 2014 with Igor Sechin, the head of Russia's largest oil producer, Rosneft, Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control said in a statement on its website.

Sechin had been blacklisted by the United States just weeks earlier.

The Treasury unit, which enforces sanctions, found ExxonMobil had not voluntarily self-disclosed the violations, "and that the violations constitute an egregious case."

Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil's chief executive at the time of the dealings, is now US secretary of state. The State Department referred questions about the fine and Tillerson's knowledge of the dealings to Exxon Mobil.

Exxon said it fully complied with sanctions guidelines in 2014 from former President Barack Obama's administration that ongoing oil and gas business activities with Rosneft were allowed, but not personal dealings with Sechin.

The oil company cited a May 2014 Treasury Department spokesman's comments that BP Plc Chief Executive Bob Dudley - an American citizen - would be allowed to remain on Rosneft's board so long as he did not discuss personal business with Sechin.

The Treasury Department "is trying to retroactively enforce a new interpretation of an executive order that is inconsistent with the explicit and unambiguous guidance from the White House and Treasury issued before the relevant conduct and still publicly available today," ExxonMobil spokesman Alan Jeffers said in a statement.

On April 28, 2014, the Treasury announced it was sanctioning Sechin as part of a package of measures aimed at pressuring Russia over its intervention in Ukraine, and said he had shown "utter loyalty to Vladimir Putin," Russia's president.

As MRC wrote previously, in 2015, U.S. oil and gas major ExxonMobil has asked the Russian government to reimburse taxes worth "several billion roubles" it says it overpaid on a project in the far east of Russia. ExxonMobil believes it overpaid profit taxes on its Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project. Russia reduced the profit tax in 2009 to 20 percent but ExxonMobil continued to pay at the earlier level of 35 percent after the project broke even in 2008. ExxonMobil owns 30 percent in Sakhalin-1.

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.
MRC