Strobel Energy Group to design, construct Prairie Catalytic ethyl acetate facility

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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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Royal Dutch Shell has contained a leak at its Pulau Bukom refining and petrochemical complex in Singapore, and operations have not been affected, a company spokeswoman said, reported Plastemart.

The small leak occurred on Friday, the spokeswoman said, without revealing further details on the affected unit.

The Bukom site, Shell's largest wholly-owned plant, has a 500,000 bpd refinery and a steam cracker that produces more than 900,000 tpa of ethylene. Shell also reported a leak at one of the units at the Bukom site in January this year. It is not clear if the incidents are related.

As MRC wrote previously, in April 2015, Royal Dutch Shell completed a revamp and upgrade of its Singapore ethane cracker. The project increased production for the 800,000-tpy ethylene plant on Bukom Island by 20%. The ethylene and olefins unit is also integrated with Shell’s 500,000-bpd refinery. The revamp project supported expansion of other intermediate product facilities located on nearby Jurong Island, including Shell’s monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant and third-party facilities.

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) -- Mexico's Pemex is planning to begin restart of propylene production at two of its refineries next week as it brings key processing units back online, as per Plastemart with reference to company sources.

Pemex will restart a fluid catalytic cracker next week at its Salina Cruz refinery in Oaxaca, which has been shut following a June 14 fire. Pemex's Minatitlan refinery in Veracruz will see the first of two FCC units come back online August 5, and the second unit would be restarted on August 12. The Minatitlan units had been offline for maintenance, the source previously said. Pemex did not respond to repeated requests for official comment.

The Salina Cruz refinery on the Pacific Coast is the largest in Mexico and a major source of refinery-grade propylene, a key feedstock for the manufacture of polypropylene resin. Salina Cruz is also a major supplier of residual fuel oil across the US border to California. The fire at Salina Cruz was the result of an oil spill reaching an ignition point in the wake of flooding from Tropical Storm Calvin, Pemex said earlier this month.

As MRC informed earlier, in November 2015, Fluor Corp. announced that ICA Fluor, its industrial engineering and construction joint venture with Empresas ICA, had signed a contract with Pemex to supply detail engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services for the utilities and offsites that are part of the Tula refinery upgrade at Hidalgo, Mexico. The total contract value is USD1.1 billion.

Pemex, Mexican Petroleum, is a Mexican state-owned petroleum company. Pemex has a total asset worth of USD415.75 billion, and is the world's second largest non-publicly listed company by total market value, and Latin America's second largest enterprise by annual revenue as of 2009. Company produces such polymers, as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS).
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