Chandra Asri boosting PE, PP capacity during scheduled plant maintenance

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chandra Asri Petrochemical (CAP) plans to complete a polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) expansion during a 55-day turnaround maintenance at its facilities in Jakarta, Indonesia, as per Apic-online.

The 400,000-t/y swing PE unit will include the production of high-density PE, linear low-density PE (LLDPE) and metallocene LLDPE, the company earlier said.

Based on Univation Technologies' XCAT metallocene PE technology, the plant will be integrated into CAP's existing naphtha cracker complex, where it operates a 336,000-t/y PE unit.

CAP's PP facility will be expanded by 110,000 t/y to 590,000 t/y. The new PE and PP capacities will come on stream in the fourth quarter of 2019 and will help the company meet domestic demand.

Maintenance, which began on 1 Aug. 2019, is being conducted on the PE, PP and butadiene plants, while the styrene monomer facility is operating as usual.

As MRC informed before, in June 2018, W. R. Grace & Co., the leading independent supplier of polyolefin catalyst technology and polypropylene (PP) process technology, granted a license which allows CAP to expand its existing UNIPOL PP plant. The world-scale capacity UNIPOL PP facility, located in Ciwandan, Indonesia, will be expanded to 590 KTA of polypropylene.

CAP is the largest integrated petrochemical company in Indonesia and operates the country’s only world-scale size Naphtha Cracker. The CAP plant is strategically located in Banten province, providing convenient access to key customers.
MRC

Motiva to buy Flint Hills Port Arthur, Texas chemical plant

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Motiva Enterprises said on Monday it has signed an agreement to buy the Flint Hills Resources chemical plant adjacent to its Port Arthur, Texas, oil refinery, kicking off a push into petrochemicals, reported Reuters.

Motiva, the US refining arm of Saudi Aramco, plans to operate the chemical plant while it builds three giant petrochemical units within its Port Arthur complex as part of an USD18 billion expansion of operations along the US Gulf Coast, said three sources familiar with the agreement.

Motiva and Flint Hills confirmed the pending deal after Reuters disclosed it had agreed to buy the operation. Motiva said it expects to deal to close by late 2019.

A Flint Hills spokesman did not reply to requests for comment.

The purchase price was not disclosed. Flint Hills acquired the plant from Huntsman Corp in 2007 for USD770 million.

The Flint Hills plant operates a 1.57 billion-pound-per-year ethylene cracker, a unit producing nylon component cyclohexane, and a network of pipelines and storage caverns, the sources said. Ethylene is a building block for plastics.

Motiva has been investing heavily in the Port Arthur area since becoming the sole owner of the 607,000 bpd refinery, after the 2017 break-up of a partnership with Royal Dutch Shell Plc that created Motiva.

In April, Houston-based Motiva announced it would refurbish two empty, historic buildings in downtown Port Arthur for use as offices. It also has filed documents with the state to build a USD5 billion steam cracker that would produce ethylene.

The sources said the Flint Hills chemical plant buys petrochemical feedstock from Motiva’s refinery, the largest in the United States.

The acquisition comes as the market for chemicals is growing faster than for gasoline and other refined products.

Motiva has considered acquiring oil refineries or taking over existing plants, but no deals were struck. In February, it ended talks with the government of Curacao over a request to operate its 335,000 barrel-per-day Isla refinery and storage terminal.

Before the split with Shell in 2017, Motiva weighed buying Lyondell Basell Industries’ 263,776-bpd Houston refinery to replace plants it was turning over to Shell.

A 2018 plan to expand Port Arthur’s oil refining operations to make it the largest plant by capacity in the world was shelved over worries of too much processing at one US Gulf Coast site vulnerable to severe storms, like 2017’s Hurricane Harvey.

A final investment decision on the petrochemical units is expected to be made between the end of 2019 and the spring of 2020, the sources said.

Motiva had considered building one of the petrochemical units in Anahuac, Texas, but those plans were changed to place all of the units in Port Arthur, the sources said.

As MRC informed earlier, Motiva Enterprises has shut the large coker at its 607,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) Port Arthur, Texas, refinery after a malfunction in the unit. Thus, Motiva shut the 110,000-bpd coker (DCU-2) on Sunday night after a compressor stopped working.

Motiva is a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s national oil company.
MRC

PVC imports to Belarus up by 14.5% in H1 2019

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Imports of unmixed polyvinyl chloride (PVC) into Belarus grew in the first half of 2019 by 14.5% year on year to 19,400 tonnes, according to MRC's DataScope report.

According to the Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus, local converters significantly increased their purchasing of PVC in June 2019 after a slump in demand a month earlier, overall imports totalled 3,900 tonnes versus 2,800 tonnes in May.

Thus, imports of unmixed PVC reached 19,400 tonnes in January-June 2019, compared to 17,000 tonnes a year earlier, with local windows producers accounting for an increase in demand.
Russian producers with the share of about 87% of the Belarusian market were the key suppliers of resin to Belarus over the stated period. Producers from Ukraine and Germany with the share of 8% and 3%, respectively, were the second and third largest suppliers.

MRC

US refinery runs expected to decline for first time in 10 years

MOSCOW (MRC) -- US gross inputs to refineries, also known as refinery runs, have increased each year since 2009, most recently reaching a record high of 17.3 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2018. However, based on its monthly refinery run data through May and forecast for the remainder of 2019, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects refinery runs to decline and average 17.0 million b/d in 2019, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

U.S. refinery capacity was at a record high of 18.8 million barrels per calendar day as of January 1, 2019. EIA’s annual Refinery Capacity Report shows that US refining capacity will not expand significantly during 2019. EIA surveys refinery capacity annually, so any changes to refinery capacities during a calendar year will not be captured until the next survey at the beginning of the next calendar year.

In late June, damage from an explosion at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery in South Philadelphia led PES to discontinue operations. The PES refinery had the largest refining capacity among East Coast refineries (335,000 b/d), but it experienced financial strains in recent years. In the six weeks since the explosion, refinery runs in the East Coast region (defined as Petroleum Administration for Defense District 1) have averaged 897,000 b/d, a decline of about 211,000 b/d from their averages in the six weeks before the explosion.

US refinery runs typically reach their highest points in the summer when demand for petroleum products (especially motor gasoline) tends to peak. So far in 2019, weekly refinery runs have averaged 17.0 b/d through August 9, or 1.4% lower than during the same period in 2018. Despite their overall lower rate, weekly refinery runs surpassed 18 million b/d in the week ending August 2—a level achieved only seven times in the past decade.

In its August Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA expects refinery runs to average 17.0 million b/d in 2019, and EIA expects them to then increase to 17.6 million b/d in 2020 because of increases in both refining capacity and utilization.
MRC

New Canadian company wants to build USD5.6 billion petrochemical plant in B.C.

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Calgary-based West Coast Olefins Ltd. (WCO) has announced plans to build a USD5.6 billion petrochemicals site in Prince George, B.C., primarily for shipment to growing Asian markets, said Canplastics.

In a statement, WCO said the project would include a world-scale ethylene plant and polyethylene facility, and that the majority of the polyethylene product would be shipped to Asia. WCO has already secured a 300-acre site in the BCR Industrial Area in Prince George, the statement said.

The firm – which was formed last year to develop natural gas projects in B.C. – is about to begin formal regulatory approval and is targeting a final investment decision by the end of 2020. If approved, the facility will create up to 1,000 permanent highly skilled jobs, while several thousand workers will be required to support the construction effort over a three-year period.

According to WCO, the overall project will include a natural gas liquids recovery plant to recover ethane, propane, butane, and natural gas condensate from Enbridge’s West Coast Pipeline; an ethylene plant to produce one million tonnes per year of polymer-grade ethylene; a polyethylene plant to consume most of the ethylene produced; and associated off-site facilities and infrastructure.

Company officials also say there is a possibility of a mono-ethylene glycol plant being constructed on site to utilize the balance of the ethylene produced.

Addressing possible environmental concerns, WCO said that it is “aware of the local sensitivity to air shed concerns in the ‘bowl area’ of Prince George, especially particulate matter and odour issues.” “The plant uses a low-carbon, clean-burning mixture of methane and hydrogen as its main fuel source for fired equipment that has no soot or odour and minimizes GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions,” the company said. “We believe that this makes a strong case for how this project fits with the provincial climate action plan.”

WCO also said that it has had “several meetings with First Nations, local leaders, and construction companies over the past six months” to discuss potential concerns.

“Council strongly encourages businesses to invest in our community,” Prince George Mayor Lyn Hall said in the statement. “We think this project has great potential and promises to have a major, positive economic impact for Prince George, the region, and the whole province.”

MRC