Afipsky oil refinery halted for maintenance on Oct 7-16

МOSCOW (MRC) - Russia’s Afipsky, a mid-sized private oil refiner, has suspended oil refining to carry out maintenance of its two crude units from Oct. 6-17, data from the country’s energy ministry shows, as per Reuters.

In January-August, Afipsky refined 3.871 million tonnes of oil, producing gasoline, diesel and some other oil products, of which some were exported to Europe.

As it was written earlier, in March 2017, NefteGazIndustriya through project developer China National Chemical Engineering in the Afipsky Oil Refinery Expansion Project at Krasnodar, Russia. Under the deal, CB&I will be responsible for detailed engineering, procurement services, construction management and commissioning services of several process units.

Afipsky Oil Refinery Ltd. produces gas, diesel fuel, and fuel oil. Afipsky Oil Refinery Ltd. was formerly known as Afipsky Oil Refinery and changed its name to Afipsky Oil Refinery Ltd. in January 2002. The company was founded in 1975 and is based in Seversk, Russia. As of June 29, 2010, Afipsky Oil Refinery Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of OOO NefteGazIndustria.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- SK Global Chemical has brought on-stream its No.1 linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) plant, as per Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in South Korea informed that the company has resumed operations at the plant on October 11, 2018. The plant was shut for maintenance in end-September, 2018.

Located in Ulsan, South Korea, the No.1 LLDPE plant has a production capacity of 210,000 mt/year.

As MRC reported earlier, in December 2017, SK Global Chemical completed its acquisition of Dow Chemical’s packaging product business. SK Global Chemical, the chemical unit of SK Innovation, signed a deal with Dow Chemical to acquire the US chemical firm’s polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) unit last October. PVDC is used for clear film packaging including plastic food wrap. With the deal completed, SK Global Chemical now has full control of properties previously owned by Dow Chemical. They include Michigan-based facilities, related technologies and intellectual assets, as well as the trademark right to the plastic wrap brand Saran.

SK Global Chemical is a pioneering petrochemical company in Korea, being the first in the country to build a naphtha cracking facility in 1972. Through continuous facility investment, R&D and technological improvement, the company has maintained its position as the leader of the petrochemical industry in Korea.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- The United States is set to be the big winner from new marine fuel rules, trading house Gunvor Group predicted, while rival merchants said the world would not face a shortage of distillates as a result of new rules to cut pollution, as per Reuters.

The UN’s International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has set new rules that will ban ships from using fuels with a sulfur content above 0.5 percent from 2020, compared with 3.5 percent now, unless they are equipped with so-called scrubbers to clean up sulfur emissions.

The industry has been expecting a sharp rise in demand for cleaner distillates, mainly diesel, at the expense of fuel oil that would become largely redundant. Gunvor Group Chief Executive Torbjorn Tornqvist said at the Oil & Money conference in London that the switch would certainly create some chaos at first as storage and logistics must deal with a “cocktail of fuel blends” and that the United States would be the major overall winner.

"Crude differentials will reflect the strong differentials between distillates (diesel) and fuel oil we will see the price of heavy crude fall and light sweet rise," Tornqvist said. Heavy sour crudes yield much more fuel oil than light, sweet oil that have a maximum sulfur content of 0.5 percent, unless a refinery has advanced equipment.

"The big winner in the IMO is actually the United States. They have the most advanced refining system in the world and will take advantage of importing more heavy crude oil and they will export light crude oil that will get a bigger premium," he said. Vitol Chairman Ian Taylor said he did not expect a major glut of high sulfur fuel oil as refiners were adding units.

"So many units have been prepared to reduce it and there’s so little high sulfur fuel left already," Taylor said. Glencore’s head of oil Alex Beard echoed the remarks as scrubbers, add-on units to ship to clean out pollutants, would still allow ships to mop up some fuel oil.

"Distillates will clearly play a very large role in shipping but what is becoming clear is that the world can cope, so it won’t be the crisis that people were thinking a year or two ago," he said. "Our estimate is that by January 2020, something like 25 percent of the world’s high sulfur fuel demand today will be from ships that have scrubbers and that will grow through 2020."
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Huntsman has announced that its Performance Products division has completed an expansion of speciality amines manufacturing capacity at its facility in Petfurdo, Hungary, as per GV.

According to the company, this expansion increases its existing polyurethane catalyst production capacity globally by over 20 %. The amine catalysts are sold globally under the name Jeffcat and are used, e.g., in the production of foam automobile seats, mattresses, and spray insulation.

"This capacity expansion leverages our strong manufacturing and technology base, which is already one of the widest in-house speciality amines manufacturing capabilities in the industry," said Gwen Fonck, Vice President, Huntsman Performance Products, Europe, Middle East & Africa. "We have consistently improved our capability and extended the product range manufactured at our Petfurdo location over the last ten years."

As MRC informed before, in March 2018, Huntsman Corporation announced the acquisition of Demilec, one of North America’s leading manufacturers and distributors of spray polyurethane foam (SPF) insulation systems for residential and commercial applications, from an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners, Inc.

Huntsman Corporation is a publicly traded global manufacturer and marketer of differentiated and specialty chemicals with 2017 revenues of more than USD8 billion. Its chemical products number in the thousands and are sold worldwide to manufacturers serving a broad and diverse range of consumer and industrial end markets. The company operate more than 75 manufacturing, R&D and operations facilities in approximately 30 countries and employ approximately 10,000 associates within its four distinct business divisions.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Neste, the world’s leading renewable products producer, and Air BP, the international aviation fuel products and services supplier, have entered into an agreement to explore opportunities to increase the supply and availability of sustainable aviation fuel for airline customers, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Through this innovative collaboration, Neste’s knowledge and manufacturing solutions for producing and blending renewable jet fuel will be brought together with Air BP’s customer relationships, expertise in developing efficient and effective supply chains, as well as their certification and product quality assurance capabilities. One goal of the cooperation will be complementary efforts to bring a co-branded sustainable aviation fuel to market at airports across Air BP’s global network.

Sustainable aviation fuel is made by blending conventional, fossil-based kerosene with renewable hydrocarbons produced from, for example, recycled cooking oil. It is then certified as "Jet-A1" fuel and can be used in aircraft without requiring any technical modifications. Flying on sustainable aviation fuel reduces crude oil consumption and produces lower lifecycle carbon emissions compared to conventional jet fuel.

"I am very happy to announce our collaboration with Air BP. Working together, we can find the best ways of developing robust supply chains to ensure that renewable jet fuel is more widely accessible. We expect our collaboration will not only be able to provide a solution to better matching supply to increased demand for renewable jet fuel, but also delivers distinct advantages to airlines by significantly decreasing their environmental footprint," says Kaisa Hietala, Neste’s Executive Vice President in Renewable Products business area.

Jon Platt, Air BP Chief Executive Officer added: “We are very pleased that through our collaboration with Neste, an industry leader in this space, we will be able to continue to support our customers with their low carbon ambitions. The aviation industry’s carbon reduction targets can only be achieved with support from across the entire supply chain and, by bringing our experience and expertise together, we are looking to drive change by promoting and securing the supply of sustainable aviation fuel."

The aviation industry has set ambitious targets to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from air transportation, including carbon-neutral growth from 2020 and beyond, and a 50 percent reduction of net aviation carbon emissions by 2050. Currently, sustainable aviation fuel offers the only viable alternative to fossil liquid fuels for powering commercial aircraft. Collaborations between forward-thinking companies like Neste and Air BP will be needed to enable the aviation industry to continue to connect the world, but do so with reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Both companies have already demonstrated their leadership in this area. Neste’s MY Renewable Jet Fuel ™ has proven its technical capability in thousands of commercial flights. It can be easily adopted by airlines without the need for additional investments in new jet engines or segregated fuel distribution systems. It is produced from renewable and sustainable raw materials, thus significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions over the life-cycle.

Air BP has supplied BP biojet in the Nordics since 2014 at around 10 airports, including Oslo where they were the first to supply sustainable aviation fuel through the existing airport fuelling infrastructure, in an earlier collaboration with Neste and other key Norwegian and industry stakeholders.
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