Strong weekly gain in N. America chemical rail volume

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chemical railcar traffic in North America strengthened notably during the week ended 5 September, according to data released on 9 September by the Association of American Railroads (AAR), said Chemweek.

On a four-week basis, volume was down 4.2% from 2019 and 5.4% from 2018 (chart), improving over respective shortfalls of 5.9% and 7.2% during the period ended 2 September. Likewise, year-to-date volume was down 4.6% from 2019 and 5.7% from 2018, versus respective shortfalls of 4.8% and 5.9% in the previous week.

Volume for the week totaled 43,730 carloads, up 1.7% year-over-year (YOY) and 0.2% sequentially. The US contributed 30,290 carloads to the total, down 1.9% YOY and down 2.1% from the previous week. For the year to date, US chemical railcar traffic is down 4.9%.

Canadian chemical rail traffic totaled 12,425 carloads, up 11.5% YOY and up 5.8% from the previous week. For the year to date, Canadian chemical railcar traffic is down 3.6%. Chemical railcar traffic in Mexico totaled 1,015 carloads, a YOY increase of 6.7% and a sequential increase of 7.0%.

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

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Johnson Matthey promoting environmental protection and sustainability via Israeli innovation, said Chemweek.

"We hope that Israel creates such a vibrant development community that we will develop more and more technologies that we can deploy all around the world," said Maurits van Tol, Chief Technology Officer at Johnson Matthey.

"We hope that Israel creates such a vibrant development community that we will develop more and more technologies that we can deploy all around the world. Many of the problems that society's facing are global challenges and we want to be part of the solution," Maurits van Tol, Chief Technology Officer at Johnson Matthey said on Monday during Calcalist and ESIL Technologies’ Sustainability and Innovation Week.

Johnson Matthey, which has a USD17 billion turnover and 14,000 employees, is a British multinational speciality chemicals and sustainable technologies company. According to van Tol, 86% of the company's sales are related to the UN’s sustainable development goals.

"We provide catalytic converters for cars, for trucks, for marine applications, and static applications. But we're also very active in the hydrogen space, for example, hydrogen production, blue hydrogen, now moving into green hydrogen. And all kinds of technologies for the production of methanol that can help with the production of fertilizers. So we're a technology and catalyst provider in the sustainability technology space," explained van Tol.

Johnson Matthey is active in Israel and works in cooperation with ESIL Technologies' innovation lab in promoting environmental protection and sustainability.

"ESIL for us is really important as a window on the world in the innovation space, in the sustainability area. And it's of course connecting very strong partners, like Bazan, EDF and ourselves," added van Tol. "We hope to grow that ecosystem together through ESIL as a connecting vehicle. We want to make sure that this planet can continue to be inhabited in a very safe way by many more generations. And if we can contribute, through ESIL, then we'd love to do that."

As MRC wrote previously, in June 2019, Johnson Matthey (JM) announced that Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group had "successfully" commissioned a new methanol plant at Ningxia Baofeng's 600,000-t/y coal-to-olefins complex in Ningxia Province, China. The 6,600-t/d methanol unit, based on technology from JM, utilizes syngas feedstock and combines advanced JM catalysts to produce stabilized methanol, which is used to produce olefins in a downstream facility.

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

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chemicals production in the EU suffered a steeper fall in percentage terms in the first half of 2020 than the worldwide decline in chemicals output, plunging by 5.2% year on year (YOY) compared to a global decrease of 3.4% YOY, according to European chemical industry association Cefic’s latest quarterly report, said Chemweek.

Producer prices in the EU27 countries were 4.8% lower to end-June than in the first half of 2019, with total combined domestic and export chemical sales for the first five months of the year falling by 7.9% YOY to EUR202.2 billion (USD239.6 billion), it says. Weak domestic demand in Europe and the deterioration of the business environment due to the impact of COVID-19 negatively impacted sales, it says. Chemical production capacity utilization in the EU27 area in the first half of the year was about 9% below the 2019 equivalent figure.

Cefic says that chemicals production in France and Italy has been “most impacted” by the COVID-19 crisis compared to other countries. Chemicals output in France and Italy fell by at least 12% in first-half 2020 compared to the previous year, followed by Spain and Portugal with a YOY drop of more than 6.5%, it says. Belgium and the Netherlands registered a decrease of about 6% in chemicals production over the same period, with Germany reporting a drop of 3.6%, while Poland saw output decline by 1.7%. The UK reported a YOY drop of 6.2% in chemicals output, it adds.

Some of the EU’s chemical sectors providing for essential supply chains during the pandemic did post growth over the period, with soaps and detergents reporting production growth of 2.9% for the first six months of 2020 compared to last year, it notes.

EU27 chemical exports outside the EU27 area in the first five months of 2020 fell by €2.7 billion, or 3.7%, compared to the prior-year period to EUR72.4 billion, according to the report. EU27 chemical exports of petrochemicals to the US rose by EUR2.3 billion, or 8.8%. This was countered, however, by a significant decrease of EU27 exports to the US in specialty chemicals and consumer chemicals over the same period, it says. EU27 chemical exports to China totaled EUR6.3 billion, up 1.2% YOY. Data for April and May showed two consecutive declines in EU27 chemical exports outside of the area, with “no clear sign of recovery” for exports being seen, it adds.

Chemical imports into the EU27 countries from outside the area declined by 1.4% YOY, or EUR800 million, to EUR56.2 billion in the first five months of 2020. A fall in imports of polymers, down EUR2.1 billion, and consumer chemicals, down EUR400 million, contributed most to the decrease in total imports, it says. There was, however, a “significant increase” of imports into the EU27 area of specialty chemicals and petchems over the same five-month period, it adds. EU27 chemical imports from China increased by 0.6% YOY to EUR6.5 billion.

The chemical production data for the EU27 area shows “signs of fragile recovery,” according to Cefic. Data for June shows 2.9% of output growth compared to May this year, but this is still about 9% below the pre-crisis level when comparing June with February this year, it says. Output has recovered gradually, with the weakest economic point of the crisis appearing to be reached in April, it notes. “It is hopefully behind us, but the spillover effect of the crisis will continue to appear for a while,” it says.

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the chemicals business “are still facing liquidity issues following the COVID-19 outbreak. Many of the SMEs are family owned mid-size companies, which typically do not have a large backstop. They will continue to face delayed payments in the near future from customers, but it is too early to capture a complete measure of these effects,” Cefic says.

The 3.4% decline YOY worldwide in chemical production for the first half of 2020 reflected a weak trend in key customer sectors that slowed chemicals growth in all countries, according to Cefic’s report. India and Japan were most affected compared to the prior-year period in terms of chemicals output, falling by 14.1% and 9.2%, respectively. The US and the EU27 area reported similar falls of about 5% over the same period, while China’s chemicals output fell 2.1% YOY, it says. “China is still an exception; output has already experienced the V-shape and [the] production level in July was the highest one ever,” it says.

The EU chemical industry “has been severely hit by the current economic downturn,” but Cefic is “encouraged to see some first, although very modest, signs of recovery in European chemical output,” says Marco Mensink, Cefic’s director general. The impact of the pandemic varies between different sectors within the chemical industry, with the overall decline in cross-sectoral manufacturing activity, including automotive and refining, likely to affect the pace of some investments, he says.

“This makes the need for a coherent policy framework to support European investments into these technologies all the more critical and timelier. At Cefic, we are calling for a ‘sectoral Green Deal’ to drive greater policy coherence,” Mensink says. With the “right policy framework,” the EU recovery package could be an opportunity to prioritize investments into innovative Green Deal solutions, such as e-crackers, chemical recycling, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture and utilization (CCU) infrastructure, and other new technologies, he says.

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.

MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- The closure of some U.S. oil refineries will have a net benefit to Magellan Midstream Partners LP’s refined products pipeline systems, the company’s chief executive officer said, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

“It creates the opportunity for more volume movement to replace what the refinery was putting into the market directly and it will create a longer-haul movement for existing volumes because they need to be transported from farther away,” said CEO Mike Mears, speaking at the Barclay’s CEO Energy-Power conference.

Multiple North American oil refiners have announced closures, or plans to repurpose their plants, as global fuel demand remains lower after plummeting from stay-at-home orders caused by the coronavirus health crisis.

Crude oil benchmarks are trading near three-month lows as the pandemic continues, with coronavirus cases rising in parts of Europe, India and in areas of the United States.

HollyFrontier’s Cheyenne, Wyoming refinery, which is being converted into a renewable diesel plant, and Marathon Petroleum’s shuttering Gallup, New Mexico, refinery are among the recently announced closures that would benefit Magellan’s system, Mears said. He said expects the trend to continue as the country moves away from traditional fuel sources in the coming decades.

"It’s very hard to predict when and who, but it will happen over the course of time," Mears said. The Tulsa, Oklahoma-based midstream company, which also transports crude oil, said it has seen demand for gasoline linger at lower levels than predicted. Metropolitan areas have lagged behind rural communities, where fuel demand has come close to fully recovering, Mears said.

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

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Dow announced that it is halfway to it meeting its goal of delivering USD1 billion in business value from projects that “enhance nature, said Chemweek.

The 2025 sustainability target dubbed “Valuing Nature” was announced in 2015 and builds on Dow’s long-running collaboration with The Nature Conservancy.

Dow says the Valuing Nature goal is the first-ever commitment by a corporation to systematically consider nature in its business decisions on such a major scale. Savings are primarily achieved by considering capital costs and lowered long-term operational and maintenance costs.

"By systematically providing the tools, structure, and business environment, we are demonstrating how investing in nature can help businesses and other organizations save money, reduce risks, and build value for all stakeholders," says Mary Draves, chief sustainability officer and vice president of Environment, Health & Safety for Dow.

Projects that contributed to the goal include a collaboration with Dutch water treatment company Evides to use local wastewater for industrial purposes, resulting in a 96.5% reduction in energy consumption and lower maintenance costs; the use of readily available stone and reinforced vegetation to stabilize brine wells in Aratu, Brazil, that reduced carbon emissions and impact on the local forest compared with traditional steel and concrete solutions; and the use of biochemical processes to treat zinc seepage in Arkansas instead of traditional neutralization systems.

As MRC informed earlier, Dow said its sites along the US Gulf Coast reported no major damage from Hurricane Laura. Dow’s sites in Sabine, Beaumont, Deer Park, La Porte, Bayport and Texas City, Texas shut down operations prior to Laura making landfall. Dow's Freeport, Texas site continued operating as did facilities across Louisiana. Dow said it has not identified any significant structural damage or flooding at any of the facilities.

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

According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.

The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational chemical corporation. Dow is a large producer of plastics, including polystyrene, polyurethane, polyethylene, polypropylene, and synthetic rubber.

MRC