Antipinsky refinery files for bankruptcy

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Russia’s Antipinsky oil refinery said it had filed for bankruptcy, weeks after a London court ordered its assets be frozen in response to a lawsuit from a trading house, said Hydracarbonprocessing.

The refinery, which has a capacity of 9 million tonnes per year, had halted operations on several occasions in recent months because of a lack of funds to pay for crude oil deliveries, according to industry sources.

Last month, a London court issued a worldwide order to freeze 225 million euros (USD251 million) in assets belonging to the refinery in response to a lawsuit by Russia’s VTB Commodities Trading.

The court order applied to the refinery’s equipment and property in Russia’s Siberian region of Tyumen, as well as petroleum products stored there and at one of its tankers in the northern port of Murmansk, among other assets.

The order also forbade the refinery from selling vacuum gas oil (VGO) to other companies without the consent of VTB Commodities Trading.

Court data on Monday showed there were 346.5 billion roubles (USD5.37 billion) of claims against the refinery.

The refinery, which last month announced plans to file for bankruptcy, alleged its insolvency was in part tied to the fact that some traders had stopped making advance payments for oil products.

“Unfortunately, in 2019 a string of traders, including VTB Commodities Trading, in violation of agreements that had been previously reached, stopped providing advances for the purchase of petroleum products,” the refinery said in a statement.

“This led to a decrease in the volume of purchased oil and to the plant stopping its processing on April 26.”

As MRC informed earlier, Russia’s Antipinsky oil refinery does not plan to receive oil this month and has removed itself from the delivery schedule. A London court has issued a worldwide order to freeze 225 million euros (USD252 million) in assets belonging to the oil refinery, owned by New Stream Group.

JSC Antipinsky Refinery was founded in July 2004 on the territory of one of the major oil and gas producing constituents of the Russian Federation - Tyumen Region, where most of Russian oil (64%) and natural gas (91%) reserves are concentrated.
MRC

Belarus proposes Russia step up delivery to Naftan oil refinery

MOSCOW (MRC0 -- Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Lyashenko said that Minsk was able to raise the volume of oil it processes and had proposed to Russia to increase its deliveries to the Naftan oil refinery, reported Reuters.

Belarus plans to seek compensation from Russia for export and transit revenues that it did not receive due to the contamination of oil via the Druzhba pipeline.

As MRC informed earlier, Belarus state oil firm Belneftekhim said in a statement in early May that not enough clean oil is available for the Novopolotsk refinery to work at its optimal capacity, after contaminated oil was received via the Russian Druzhba pipeline.
MRC

HDPE imports to Russia in March-April hit a record high in the last 15 months

MOSCOW (MRC) -- April imports of high density polyethylene (HDPE) into Russia decreased to 31,600 tonnes from 32,800 tonnes a month earlier. However, these figures have been the record-breaking imports since December 2017, according to MRC's DataScope report.
The record high imports were last registered in November-December 2017, when they exceeded 32,000 tonnes per month. Such high imports in late 2017 were caused by the scheduled and long outage at some of production capacities of Russia's second largest HDPE producer - Stavrolen. This year' record imports were caused by higher HDPE shipments from producers in Central Asia.


In October 2018, a new gas chemical complex with a total capacity of just over 380,000 tonnes per year was launched in Turkmenistan, which led to an increase in supply of HDPE in Central Asia. At the same time, the new producer has offered for sale injection moulding and pipe grade HDPE so far.

Thus, overall HDPE imports into Russia exceeded 107,900 tonnes in the first four months of 2019, whereas a year earlier this figure was 80,800 tonnes. The following countries were the top five countries in terms of polyethylene (PE) shipments in 2019: Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Finland, South Korea and Thailand.

MRC

Hyundai Engineering to execute Polymers Police project

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PDH Polska, owned by top Polish chemical group Azoty and Grupa Azoty Police, has signed a EUR 993 million turn-key contract with Hyundai Engineering Co., Ltd for the execution of the Polymers Police investment project, reported TheFirstNews with reference to the companies' statements.

The "Polymers Police" project is a strategic undertaking of Grupa Azoty Capital Group implemented by PDH Polska S.A., a special purpose vehicle.

"Polymers Police" is one of the largest chemical investments in this part of Europe. The aim of the project is to build a completely new petrochemical complex, the scope of which will include: Propane Dehydrogenation (PDH) Unit; Polypropylene (PP) Production Unit; Polypropylene (PP) Logistics Infrastructure; Handling and Storage Terminal (gas terminal) and Auxiliary Systems

The annual production capacity of the complex is to reach 437 thousand tonnes of polypropylene.

The project is to be completed in 2022.

As MRC informed earlier, in January 2018, W R Grace & Co (GRA) said that it had contracted to license its Unipol PP process technology to PDH Polska SA for a new facility in Police, Poland. With a capacity of 400 kilotons per year, the polypropylene PP line is expected to begin operations in 2022.
MRC

Venezuelas 310,000 bpd Cardon oil refinery halts operations due to damage

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Venezuela’s 310,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Cardon oil refinery, operated by state-run oil company PDVSA, halted operations due to damage at some of its units, two workers at the Paraguana refining complex said, as per Reuters.

Neither PDVSA nor Venezuela’s oil ministry immediately responded to requests for comment.

The outage comes amid widespread fuel shortages in several states of the oil-rich but crisis-stricken country. Cardon is the country’s second-largest refinery, after 645,000-bpd Amuay.

In February, PetroChina Co planned to drop Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) as a partner in a planned USD10 billion oil refinery and petrochemical project in southern China.
MRC