China extended Lunar New Year holiday

MOSCOW (MRC) -- China’s State Council has announced the extension of the Lunar New Year holiday to 2 February 2020 as the country attempt to contain the new virus outbreak. The holiday originally was from 24 January to 30 January 2020, reported CommoPlast.

In some places including Shanghai and Guangdong Province, businesses would remain closed until 9 February 2020, according to the official announcement.

Meanwhile, the Education Department would issue separate notice pertaining to the resumption of schools and colleges across the country.

We remind that, as MRC wrote before, China Sinochem Group is expected to start up a new crude processing unit and a petrochemical complex in southeastern China around mid-2020, marking the state firm's first foray into making petrochemicals. The state-run oil and chemicals group is adding 60,000 barrels per day of crude processing capacity at an existing 240,000-bpd refinery in Quanzhou, Fujian province. It will also begin operations around June of a petrochemical plant, including a naphtha cracker that can produce one million tonnes per year (tpy) of ethylene. The expansion is part of a new wave of investments in China, led by private chemical giants Hengli Petrochemical and Zhejiang Rongsheng Holdings, that have boosted output of petrochemicals such as paraxylene (PX), the key raw material for synthetic fibre and water bottles. China is the world's largest petrochemical importer.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- MarkWest Javelina, has shut its Corpus Christi cracker owing to power failure, according to Apic-online.

A Polymerupdate source in the US informed that, the company has halted operations at the cracker on January 26, 2020. Further details on duration of shutdown could not be ascertained.

Located in Corpus Christi, Texas, U.S., the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 1 million mt/year and a propylene capacity of 45,000 mt/year.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

Markwest Javelina Company, L.L.C. was founded in 2008. The company's line of business includes providing oil and gas services.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Motiva Enterprises plans to finish shutting down the gasoline-producing unit at its 607,000 barrel-perday (bpd) Port Arthur Arthur, Texas, refinery on Monday to begin a planned overhaul of the unit, sources familiar with plant operations said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Motiva began shutting the 81,000 bpd fluidic catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) on Sunday for a planned 50-day overhaul, the sources said.

Motiva declined to comment on Monday.

While the FCCU is shut for the planned 50-day overhaul, Motiva will also shut the 18,000-bpd alkylation unit and the 50,000-bpd cat feed hydrotreater for 30-day overhauls, the sources said.

As MRC informed earlier, Motiva Enterprises, the US refining arm of Saudi Aramco, acquired 100% of Flint Hills Resources chemical plant, adjacent to its Port Arthur, Texas, oil refinery. 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. Saudi Aramco, in its IPO prospectus, said the cash payment will be determined as per the project value at SAR 7.13 billion (USD1.9 billion).

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.

Motiva Enterprises, LLC, is a fully owned affiliate of Saudi Refining Inc. and headquartered in Houston, Texas, United States with revenue of USD24 billion. Previously, it was a 50–50 joint venture between Shell Oil Company (the wholly owned American subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell) and Saudi Refining Inc. (controlled by Saudi Aramco).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A U.S. appeals court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must reconsider three of the biofuel waivers it recently granted to small oil refineries, arguing the agency’s justification for approving the exemptions was flawed, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The decisihere from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit dated Jan. 24 came after a coalition of biofuel industry groups had challenged the 2016 exemptions for Holly Frontier's Woods Cross and Cheyenne refineries, as well as CVR Energy's Wynewood refinery.

The biofuel industry has been incensed by a surge in biofuel waivers granted under President Donald Trump’s administration, which it says is hurting farmers by undermining demand for corn-based ethanol.

Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, the nation’s oil refineries are required to blend billions of gallons of biofuels such as ethanol into the fuel or buy credits from those that do. But the EPA can waive their obligations if they prove compliance would cause them financial distress.

According to the court’s decision, the EPA overstepped its authority to grant the Holly Frontier and CVR waivers because the refineries had not received exemptions in the previous year. The court said the RFS is worded in such a way that any exemption granted to a small refinery after 2010 must take the form of an "extension".

"Because an ‘extension’ requires a small refinery exemption in prior years to prolong, enlarge or add to, the three refinery petitions in this case were improvidently granted," according to the court’s 99-page decision. "We remand these matters to the EPA for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."

Biofuel groups cheered the decision and said it could raise questions about numerous other waivers granted to small refiners in recent years. The Trump administration has roughly quadrupled here the number of waivers it has handed out to small refiners.

"Although RFA will be digesting the opinion and the implications for other proceedings, we are pleased to see judicial agreement with our long-held position that EPA’s recent practices and policies regarding small refinery exemption extensions were completely unlawful," according to a statement from the Renewable Fuels Association.

Consultancy ClearView Energy Partners said in a note to clients it expects the decision to raise prices for biofuel blending credits required for RFS compliance, called Renewable Identification Numbers.

As MRC informed earlier, Rosneft said that its German subsidiary Rosneft Deutschland GmbH had completed the deal to acquire a 3.57% stake in Germany’s Bayernoil Raffineriegesellschaft mbH from BP.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Belarus received the first batch of Norwegian oil at its Naftan refinery, state oil company Belneftekhim said following a row with Belarus’s main oil supplier Russia, reported Reuters.

Moscow suspended oil supplies to refineries in Belarus from Jan. 1, though it partially restored them on Jan. 4, after both countries failed to agree terms on supplies for 2020.

Minsk has arranged an import of 86,000 tonnes of crude from Norway’s Johan Sverdrup field via Lithuania’s Klaipeda.

On Sunday Naftan, one of the two major Belarusian refineries that have been running at minimum load this year, received 3,500 tonnes in the first batch, Belneftekhim said.

According to ICIS-MRC Price report, lower capacity utilisation at Polymir (part of Naftan) did not affect the balance of the local low density polyethylene (LDPE) market, there was no shortage of polyethylene (PE). Local companies partially compensated for the absence of domestic PE by higher shipments from Russia.

Polymir (part of Naftan) is Belarus' largest petrochemical company, producing a wide range of chemical products, such as LDPE, acrylic fibers, products of organic synthesis, hydrocarbon fractions, etc. Polymir was founded in 1968. The producer uses technologies of the largest foreign companies from Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Italy (Courtaulds, Asahi Chemical Co. Ltd, Kanematsu Gosho, SNIA BPD, etc.), as well as the developments of scientific research institutes and design institutes of the CIS countries. The plant"s annual production capacity is 130,000 tonnes.
MRC