MOSCOW (MRC) -- Odfjell (Bergen, Norway) says a significant expansion of its European chemicals storage capacity has been completed at the port of Antwerp, Belgium, said Chemweek.
Noord Natie Odfjell Antwerp Terminal (NNOAT), in which Odfjell holds a 25% stake, has completed the expansion with the introduction of seven new tanks with a total storage capacity of 12,700 cubic meters. The new stainless-steel tanks are specifically designed and tailored for specialty chemicals, with the expansion completed “in a time of increased demand,” Odfjell says. This is the third fully automated tank pit at NNOAT’s terminal, it adds.
Odfjell’s ships visit the port of Antwerp more than 80 times per year, with the port “the most important for chemicals in the EU,” according to Odfjell.
NNOAT has a total storage capacity of 390,000 cu meters, with 236 tanks located in 16 interconnected tank pits. An ongoing expansion program at the terminal will increase current capacity by 130,000 cu meters in total, with the next phase to add another new tank pit with storage capacity of 45,000 cu meters by mid-2022.
As MRC informed earlier, Norwegian chemical shipper Odfjell acknowledged in August the company would not build a USD300 million, 745,000 mt/year facility at its terminal near the mouth of the ship channel and recorded a USD1.6 million writedown related to the project on its third-quarter 2019 earnings. CEO Kristian Verner Morch had already signaled in February 2018 that Odfjell likely would not move ahead on its plans if a competitor did so first.
Energy Transfer Partners and NOVA Chemicals also briefly teamed up to establish an ethylene export terminal, but NOVA said in July 2018 the companies shelved it when unable to agree on terms.
The US currently has one ethylene export terminal, operated by Targa Resources at its ship channel facility, which is contracted to Mitsubishi Chemical. The facility has a loading capacity of 1,000 mt/d, so it takes about 10 days to load a Handysize vessel.
Enterprise's terminal will be able to load 1,000 mt/hour at multiple docks. A single ship can carry both ethane and ethylene in separate compartments.
Some US producers had been skeptical of the need for more US ethylene export capacity because derivatives would soak up that output. More than 7.74 million mt/year of new ethylene capacity has started up in the US since 2017, another 2 million mt/year is slated to come online by year-end 2019 and 8.3 million mt/year more is under construction or planned for startup through the 2020s.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 595,170 tonnes in the first five month of 2020, up by 10% year on year. Deliveries of all ethylene polymers, except for linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE), rose partially because of an increase in capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market was 457,930 tonnes in January-May 2020 (calculated by the formula production minus export plus import). Deliveris of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
MRC