INEOS to deliver the first ever US ethane from shale gas to China in 2019

MOSCOW (MRC) -- INEOS and China’s SP Chemicals agree long term supply agreement for ethane from US Shale Gas
Agreement includes construction of new carrier ship, the largest ethane carrier ever built, said the company on its website.

David Thompson, CEO of INEOS Trading & Shipping, said: ‘This is another world first for INEOS after importing shale gas to Europe in 2015. By bringing in US ethane from shale gas to China for the first time, we are now leading the way in shipping ethane worldwide to meet the needs of an expanding chemicals sector. We are excited to work with a client such as SP Chemicals and we look forward to delivering this historic project.

INEOS has today announced a long-term supply agreement with SP Chemicals to deliver ethane from US shale gas to China. The agreement, which will see US ethane from shale gas shipped to China for the first time, will supply SP Chemicals with a long-term competitive supply of ethane for its industrial production.

The deal will involve the construction of a 95,000cbm capacity ship which is expected to be delivered in 2019. Known in the US as a ‘Very Large Ethane Carrier’ or VLEC it will be the largest ethane carrier in the world, and will ship US ethane from shale gas to SP Chemicals’ new gas cracker facility, currently under construction in Taixing China. As with the INEOS Dragon ships, this vessel will be operated by EVERGAS. It will be the first VLEC in their fleet of 23 gas ships. The ship will be built in China under the management of the JACCAR Group.

Ethane is used to make ethylene - one of the world’s most important chemical building blocks. Ethylene is an important raw material used to make products for a wide variety of industrial and consumer markets such as transportation, electronics, textile and construction.

David Thompson, CEO of INEOS Trading and Shipping, said, "This is another world first for INEOS after importing shale gas to Europe in 2015. By bringing in US ethane from shale gas to China for the first time, we are now leading the way in shipping ethane worldwide to meet the needs of an expanding chemicals sector.We are excited to work with a client such as SP Chemicals and we look forward to delivering this historic project."

Chan Hian Siang, CEO of SP Chemicals, said, "SP Chemicals is honoured and very happy to work with INEOS, a first-class global company, to ship ethane over a journey of more than 18,900 km across the Pacific Ocean from USA to Taixing City, Jiangsu province, PRC. It has long been a dream for SP Chemicals to integrate upstream. SP Chemicals will commission a gas cracker plant in 2019 to produce 650,000 tons per annum of ethylene. This first long-term supply agreement for ethane with INEOS will be an important milestone for SP Chemicals to achieve self-sufficiency for its ethylene requirements."

Jacques De Chateauvieux, Chairman of the JACCAR Group, said, "This Contract illustrates JACCAR’s ability to offer a comprehensive solution with type C Tri-lobe VLEC tanks developed by JHW Engineering and Contracting, in co-operation with the Hartmann Group up to the contracting and operating by Evergas. We feel honoured by the trust of INEOS in us in delivering and operating the world’s largest VLEC with type C tanks."

Steffen Jacobsen, CEO of Evergas, said "We are very pleased to further strengthen our relationship with INEOS co-operating on the seabourne transportation of Ethane from the US to China".
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) - Russia's Novatek has provisionally set Dec. 8 as the official launch date for its Yamal LNG plant, two sources with direct knowledge of the event planning told Reuters.

Novatek's partners on the project are France's Total , the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and China's Silk Road Fund. The project, on the Yamal Peninsula above the Arctic Circle, will be Russia's second LNG plant after Sakhalin-2 on the Pacific island of Sakhalin.

At full capacity, the Yamal facility will be able to produce 16.5 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas a year, which it will ship to Europe and Asia. It is being built in three phases.

One of the sources received an invitation for a Dec. 8 opening of phase 1 and an industry source confirmed the date but both said the date may change, depending on the schedule of high-ranking officials expected at the event.

A Novatek spokesman said he could not confirm Dec. 8 as the launch date. The company has said that it aimed to open the plant before the end of this year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF is in discussions regarding a potential merger of BASF Group’s oil and gas activities with Letter One’s oil and gas activities bundled in the DEA Group, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

BASF would hold the majority of the shares in the joint enterprise. An Initial Public Offering (IPO) of the joint enterprise would be an option in the medium term. The outcome of the discussions is open and there is no assurance that any transaction will be consummated.

BASF’s oil and gas activities are bundled in the Wintershall Group. Wintershall focuses on exploration and production in oil and gas-rich regions in Europe, North Africa, Russia, South America and the Middle East.

Together with Gazprom, the company is also active in the transport of natural gas in Europe. For the full year 2016, net sales of the Oil & Gas segment of the BASF Group amounted to around EUR2.8 B, EBITDA was around EUR1.6 B and EBIT around EUR500 MM.

As MRC informed previously, within the next five years, BASF plans to invest globally more than EUR200 million in its plastic additives business, approximately half of which in Asia, focusing on capacity expansions and operational excellence. Plastic additives improve product properties such as scratch resistance or light stability, and optimize plastics manufacturing processes. As the leading global supplier of plastic additives with manufacturing assets in all regions, BASF is a major partner to the plastics industry.

BASF is the largest diversified chemical company in the world and is headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany. BASF produces a wide range of chemicals, for example solvents, amines, resins, glues, electronic-grade chemicals, industrial gases, basic petrochemicals and inorganic chemicals. The most important customers for this segment are the pharmaceutical, construction, textile and automotive industries. BASF had sales of over EUR74 billion in 2014 and over 113,000 employees as of the end of the year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil is in plans to undertake maintenance turnaround at its cracker in Singapore, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in Singapore informed that the cracker is expected to be shut for turnaround in Setember 2018. The planned maintenance is expected to remain in force for around 45 days.

We remind that, as MRC informed before, in December 2016, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) received an order for supply of systems to support a large-scale polyethylene production train for ExxonMobil's Beaumont Polyethylene plant. The new production train is slated to be completed in 2019, and will produce 650,000 tons of polyethylene per year.

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

MOSCOW (MRC) — Brazilian police detained six people as part of an investigation into suspected bribery at a unit of state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, prosecutors said on Tuesday, in the latest development in a corruption scandal, said Reuters.

Police carried out eight search warrants related to the scheme. Prosecutors say illegal payments were made by a contractor to a manager of Transpetro, a subsidiary of Petrobras, as the company is commonly known.

Transpetro did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Prosecutors say the payments to the unnamed manager, which totaled 7 MM reais (USD2.15 MM), occurred between 2009 and 2014. According to investigators, part of those bribes were then passed to Brazil's leftist Workers' Party.

The investigation unveiled on Tuesday follows revelations of a separate alleged scheme involving Transpetro and the Brazilian Democracy Movement Party (PMDB) of President Michel Temer.

In September, a Brazilian prosecutor charged six current and former PMDB senators of unduly receiving 864 MM reais in bribes, generating losses of 5.5 B reais at Petrobras and 113 MM reais at the Transpetro subsidiary.

As part of the most recent investigation, police said the arrests are taking place in the states of Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina, Sergipe, and Bahia.
MRC