Hyundai Heavy wins ship contract from Vitol worth up to USD600 MM

MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries Co has won a contract worth up to USD600 MM from Vitol, the world's largest independent oil trader, for as many as eight gas tankers, reported Reuters.

The world’s largest shipbuilder signed the contract on Sunday to construct two liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tankers with a capacity of 84,000 m3 each. The ships are expected to be delivered in the first half of 2019.

Vitol has the option to order six more tankers.

As MRC informed before, in March 2017, South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering Co signed a deal worth USUSD3.2 billion with Iran’s Ahdaf Investment Company for the construction of the second phase of a petrochemical complex in Iran. Hyundai Engineering will act as lead manager of the Kangan Petro Refining Complex in southwestern Iran. The petrochemical complex is planned to have an annual production of around 1 million tons of ethylene, 500,000 tons of monoethylene glycol, and 350,000 tons of heavy and light polyethylene. The financing of the deal – which was signed as an Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Finance (EPCF) contract - will be finalized within nine months by Korean banks, the Iranian oil ministry’s news service Shana said on Sunday. Construction will take 48 months, according to the Iranian news service.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- President Donald Trump signed a Russia sanctions bill Congress forced on him, adding a statement saying the administration will carry out the law but with reservations about its impact and the constitutionality of some provisions, as per Bloomberg.

In a statement Wednesday accompanying the notice that he signed into law the legislation, which also targets Iran and North Korea, Trump laid out a list of concerns. He said it encroaches on presidential authority, may hurt U.S. ability to work with allies and could have unintended consequences for American companies.

“While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed,” the statement released by the White House said.

Trump’s statement doesn’t signal any intent to bypass or circumvent aspects of the law. Instead, the president indicates he intends for his administration to carry it out in a way consistent with his constitutional authority, language that leaves open some room for interpretation of how the law is executed.

The legislation, passed by overwhelming, veto-proof margins in the U.S. House and Senate, strengthens sanctions on Russia and gives Congress the power to block the president from lifting them.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Strobel Energy Group has announced that it has executed an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) agreement with Prairie Catalytic, LLC, a subsidiary of Greenyug, LLC, to design and construct its commercial scale Bio-Ethanol to Ethyl Acetate facility in Nebraska, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Ethyl Acetate is a specialty solvent used extensively in products such as paints, coatings, pharmaceuticals, adhesives and a variety of consumer goods.

The Prairie Catalytic production facility will be located adjacent to the Archer Daniels Midland Company's Corn Processing Plant in Columbus, Nebraska which will supply the project with Bio-Ethanol feedstock and other services. Strobel has initiated the detailed engineering design and will begin construction of the facility in Q3 2017 with commissioning and production expected within approximately one year. HELM AG, based in Hamburg, Germany and Piscataway, NJ, has executed an off-take agreement for 100% of the Ethyl Acetate produced at the Prairie Catalytic facility.

Greenyug developed its patented technology at its Santa Barbara, California research facility and continued the scale-up at its fully integrated demonstration plant. Greenyug has developed a proprietary platform to add value to ethanol by upgrading it into a variety of bio-based chemicals with broad market appeal. Greenyug Ethyl Acetate will be the first commercially available in industrial quantities to be entirely sourced from renewable feedstock. The global market for Ethyl Acetate exceeds USD4 B.

We remind that, as MRC reported earlier, the global bioplastics market is estimated to grow at a double-digit CAGR of 28.8% uptil 2020, as per Future Market Insights. The global bio-plastics market accounted for USD1.9 bln in 2014, and is expected to reach USD43.8 bln by 2020. The global bio-plastics market accounted for 0.1% to the global plastics market in 2014. Factors driving the growth of the global bio-plastics market include growing beverage packaging industry, rigid government policies about adopting bio-based materials, and rising consumer acceptance for bio-plastics.

By material type, the market is segmented as bio-PET, bio-PE, bio-PA, bio-degradable polyesters, PLA & PLA blends, starch blends, PHA and others. Bio-PET market is expected to contribute USD29.1 Bn revenue to the overall bio-plastics market by 2020. Moreover, the bio-PET market is expected to be the fastest growing segment with a CAGR of 31.4% between 2014 and 2020. On the basis of application, the global bio-plastics market is segmented as bottlers, other packaging, food-services, agriculture/horticulture, consumer products, automotive and others.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Japan's Idemitsu Kosan is in plans shut its naphtha cracker for a maintenance turnaround, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Japan informed that the cracker is expected to be taken off-line for maintenance on September 20, 2017. The shutdown is likely to remain in force until end-October 2016.

Located at Chiba in Japan, the cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 375,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported before, Idemitsu Kosan said in late November 2016 that its JV with Mitsui Chemicals would conduct work to expand the processing of propane at Idemitsu's naphtha cracker to take advantage of cheap liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) prices. The work will be carried out in autumn 2017 and last about a month, during which time the cracker will be shut. The upgrade will boost the cracker's capacity to process propane as feedstock by three or four times, said Hideki Gotoh, deputy general manager of Idemitsu's petrochemical business. He added that Idemitsu would pay the costs for the upgrade, without giving a figure. The benefit from boosting propane and cutting naphtha as feedstock is set to lead to cost cuts of around USD8.90 million a year, the company spokeswoman said then.

Idemitsu Kosan is a Japanese petroleum company. It owns and operates oil platforms, refineries and produces and sells petroleum, oils and petrochemical products. The company runs two petrochemical plants in Chiba and Tokuyama. The two naphtha crackers can produce up to 997,000 tonnes of ethylene per year.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Refiner Marathon Petroleum Corp's quarterly profit missed Street view as higher crude acquisition costs weighed on its refining and marketing margins, reported Reuters.

Despite stronger crack spreads - the difference between the prices of crude oil and refined products - in the Q2, higher crude oil and feedstock acquisition costs led to a 11.1% fall in marketing and refining margins in the second quarter ended June 30.

Marathon, the first major US refiner to report quarterly results, said refining and marketing gross margin fell to USD11.32 per barrel in the reported quarter from USD12.73 last year.

Total costs and expenses rose about 12% to USD17.33 B in the quarter.

Income from the company's refining and marketing segment, which accounted for more than half the total income, fell 45.2% to USD562 MM in the quarter.

Net income attributable to Marathon fell 35.7% to USD515 MM, or USD1 per share, in the second quarter, from USD801 million, or USD1.51 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, Marathon earned USD1.03 per share, missing analysts' average estimate of USD1.07 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenues and other income rose 9.3% to USD18.35 B.

As MRC wrote previously, in January 2017, Praxair, Inc. signed a long-term contract to supply hydrogen to Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s refinery in Garyville, Louisiana. The company will use the hydrogen to support an ultra-low-sulfur diesel project planned for 2018. Marathon Petroleum is the third-largest transportation fuels refiner in the US and operates an integrated refining, marketing and transportation system in the Midwest, East, Southeast and Gulf Coast. The hydrogen will be supplied through Praxair’s extensive Southeast Louisiana pipeline network.

Marathon Oil Corporation is a United States-based oil and natural gas exploration and production company. Principal exploration activities are in the United States, Norway, Equatorial Guinea, Poland, Angola and Iraqi Kurdistan.
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