PetroChina took off-stream petrochemical plant in Guangxi province due to coronavirus outbreak

MOSCOW (MRC) -- State-owned PetroChina shut its Guangxi Petrochemical in southern Guangxi province on February 9 for scheduled 50-day maintenance, a refinery source told S&P Global .

The maintenance should help the refinery to offset stock pressure after product demand slumped due to the coronavirus outbreak.

As MRC reported previously, PetroChina's subsidiary refinery, Dalian Petrochemical Corp, plans to have a major turnaround in April-May of 2020, four industry sources told Reuters in early January 2020. The maintenance is scheduled to start from late March or early April and will last for around one and a half months, the sources said.

The 410,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) plant in the northeast Chinese port city of Dalian, PetroChina's biggest refinery, is linked to Russia's East Siberia Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline and is China's largest processor of the pipeline ESPO blend crude.

We also remind that Sichuan Petrochemical (part of PetroChina) undertook an emergency shutdown at its naphtha cracker in Sichuan province of China on July 11, 2018 owing to a gas leak at its natural gas supply pipeline. Further details on duration of the outage could not be ascertained. Located at Sichuan province of China, the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 800,000 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 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

PetroChina Company Limited, is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation, headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. It is China's biggest oil producer.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) and ALPLA have established a new joint venture, named Envicco, to build and operate a recycled plastics resin plant at the Asia Industrial Estate in Rayong Province, Thailand, according to Apic-online.

Envicco, owned 70% by PTTGC and 30% by ALPLA, will manufacture 30,000 t/y of recycled polyethylene ter-ephthalate (PET) and 15,000 t/y of recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Commercial operations are expected to begin within the fourth quarter of 2021.

The new plant "substantially aligns" with PTTGC's Sustainability Strategy for Circular Economy, which aims to be a pilot company for plastic waste management by converting used plastic packaging to "high-quality" recycled plastic resins to serve the increasing market demand, PTTGC noted.

As MRC reported before, PTTGC has planned to bring on-stream its No. 2 cracker in Map Ta Phut by end-February, 2020. The cracker was shut for maintenance on January 20, 2020. Located at Map Ta Phut, Thailand, the No. 2 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 400,000 mt/year.

The company also operates No. 1 cracker at the same site with a capacity of 515,000 tonnes of ethylene and 310,000 tonnes of propylene per year, which was also shut on 23 January, 2020, for a 40-day turnaround.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

PTT Global Chemical is a leading player in the petrochemical industry and owns several petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 8.45 million tonnes a year.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Teijin Ltd. is expanding its footprint in Europe with Teijin Automotive Center Europe GmbH, a new base in Wuppertal, Germany, that will house technical functions for the company’s automotive composites business, reported PlasticsNews.

Teijin Ltd. is expanding its footprint in Europe with Teijin Automotive Center Europe GmbH (TACE), a new base in Wuppertal, Germany, that will house technical functions for the company's automotive composites business.

The Japanese materials firm said Jan. 28 that the German operation will handle concept, designing, prototyping, evaluations, marketing and technical research for next-generation automotive components.The Wuppertal site will be up and running in February.

With TACE, Teijin said it will allow the company to establish a stronger platform for collaboration within the group's European automotive composites business. More specifically, TACE will explore and research opportunities for new technologies, as well as mergers and acquisitions, in an effort to accelerate joint development with European automakers and respond to demands for design freedom, productivity, cost efficiency, weight reduction and strength.

In the past few years, Teijin has been making strategic moves in Europe as it targets sales of approximately 1.7 billion euros (EUR1.9 billion) within its automotive composites business by 2030. This includes the acquisition last year of Benet Automotive sro., a Tier 1 supplier of composite components with three facilities in the Czech Republic and one in Germany. In 2018, Teijin acquired Portugal's Inapal Plasticos SA, another automotive composites supplier.

Teijin-owned Continental Structural Plastics Inc. of Auburn Hills, Mich., is also further tapping into Europe. The composites supplier's French operation is opening a new sheet molding compound plant.

In addition, Teijin is pursuing opportunities for other locations for its automotive composites business in the United States and China. The strategy is part of the company's response to the automotive industry's "ongoing shift toward connected, autonomous, shared and electric automobiles" and the growing need for more lightweight, multifunctional and multimaterial designs, the news release said.

As MRC wrote before, in late 2015, Japan's Teijin shut down its polycarbonate (PC) resin plant in Singapore by end 2015 and put the industrial facility on Jurong Island up for sale through an expression of interes. The plan to shutter was part of the company's restructuring exercise of its loss-making businesses. Hurt particularly by high energy costs, the Singapore plant, which began operations in October 1999, had also been beaten by low-cost China rivals. It had four production lines. One production line was shut down in October, 2014, and another in May, 2015. The remaining two were shut by late 2015. Teijin scaled back on its production of commoditised products under its restructuring exercise, and moved its production of PC resin to its subsidiary in China and to its plant in Matsuyama in Japan, which it considers especially suited to the development of high-performance products, the company said then.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PC consumption (excluding imports and exports to/from Belarus) totalled 78,500 tonnes in 2019, up by 15% year on year (68,100 tonnes a year earlier).

Teijin is a technology-driven global group offering advanced solutions in the areas of sustainable transportation, information and electronics, safety and protection, environment and energy, and healthcare. Its main fields of operation are high-performance fibers such as aramid, carbon fibers & composites, healthcare, films, resin & plastic processing, polyester fibers, products converting and IT. The group has some 150 companies and around 17,000 employees spread out over 20 countries worldwide.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- HoopTM, a circle as the symbol of circularity per excellence, is the project launched by Versalis, the petrochemical division of Italy's Eni SpA, for the development of a new technology to chemically recycle plastic waste, said Eni on is site.

On 17 February, 202, Versalis signed a joint development agreement with Italian engineering company, Servizi di Ricerche e Sviluppo (S.R.S.), which owns a pyrolysis technology that will be further developed to transform mixed plastic waste, that cannot be mechanically recycled, into raw material to produce new virgin polymers.

Versalis will leverage its technological and industrial expertise to build a first plant with a capacity of 6,000 tonnes per year at the Mantova site, with a view to progressively scaling-up, starting from its sites in Italy.

@This project confirms Versalis’ strategy to develop a chemical recycling technology that complements mechanical recycling technology, which the company is already engaged in, with the goal to give new life to plastic waste» said Daniele Ferrari, Versalis’ CEO. «The HoopTM project aims to create a theoretically endless plastic recycling process, producing new virgin polymers suitable for all applications and that are identical to polymers that come from fossil raw materials".

As MRC informed earlier, Versalis shut its cracking unit in Priolo, Sicily, for repairs in the last days of December, 2019. The capacity of the cracking unit at this complex is 490,000 tonnes of ethylene and 130,000 tonnes of propylene per year. The maintenance works lasted until February 2020. Loading at this cracker was reduced in November and December 2019.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

Versalis is a petrochemical company, a 100% subsidiary of the Italian oil and gas company Eni SpA. The company produces a wide range of petrochemical products, and is also one of the world's leading elastomer companies.
Eni spa (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi) is an Italian oil and gas company headquartered in Rome. Eni operates in 70 countries.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- A contractor working at Shell's Pulau Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore has contracted the new coronavirus, reported Reuters with reference to the company's statement on Friday, as the city-state reported its biggest jump in new cases so far.

The Bukom manufacturing site in Singapore houses Shell's biggest wholly-owned refinery. The company said earlier it had sent some staff home from its main office at Metropolis in western Singapore after discovering another employee had been in contact with a carrier.

The company said its operations at both locations had been unaffected by the incidents.

The contractor working at the Bukom site tested positive for the fast-spreading coronavirus now labelled Covid-19 on Thursday, according to Shell statement on Friday.

Singapore's Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the 30-year old Singaporean is a relative of a 62-year old employee at Singapore's biggest bank, DBS Group Holdings, and first reported symptoms on Jan. 30.

The bank had asked 300 staff to leave its head office in the financial district on Wednesday and work from home as a precautionary measure after an employee tested positive for coronavirus.

A Shell spokeswoman said that as a precautionary measure, personnel who shared the same work area as the contractor were placed on leave of absence when Shell received an alert on a suspected case.

"We have thoroughly cleaned and disinfected the worker's work area and common areas in accordance with guidelines," she told Reuters.

She added that Shell had also implemented precautionary measures as advised by the Singapore Health ministry including temperature screening at Pulau Bukom and other Shell Singapore sites and work locations.

The Pulau Bukom manufacturing site is an integrated refinery and chemicals site and can process up to 500,000 barrels per day of oil.

Singapore on Friday reported 9 new cases of the virus, its biggest increase to date and bringing the total to 67. The city-state has one of the highest tallies of the disease outside China.

As MRC wrote previously, Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island in early December, 2019, following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).

Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
MRC