MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sibur, Gazprom Neft, and Uzbekneftegaz have agreed to cooperate on potential investments in Uzbekistan including a major expansion of Uzbekneftegaz’s existing Shurtan Gas Chemical Complex (SGCC) and the proposed construction of a new gas chemicals facility, said Chemweek.
"Sibur and Gazprom Neft will explore the possibilities of participating in the implementation of the project to expand the production capacity of the Shurtan Gas Chemical Complex,” says Sibur, Russia’s largest petrochemicals producer. The companies will also “consider the possibility of joint implementation of an investment project for the construction of a gas chemical complex based on natural gas resources produced in Uzbekistan with a capacity of up to 3 billion cubic meters," it says. The location for the new complex and potential investment amounts were not given.
The signed cooperation agreement for the projects includes “the creation of a gas chemical complex using methanol-to-olefins [MTO] technology, and the expansion of the production capacity of the Shurtan Gas Chemical Complex,” says Uzbekistan’s energy ministry in an official statement. The cooperation agreements were signed by the two Russian companies and Uzbekneftegaz last week during an official visit to Moscow by a delegation from Uzbekistan’s energy ministry, the ministry says.
The Shurtan complex, operated by state-owned Uzbekneftegaz, currently processes ethylene and more than 134,000 metric tons/year of polyethylene (PE), 116,000 metric tons/year of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), 103,000 metric tons/year of gas condensate, and 4.1 billion cu meters/year of raw gas, according to latest information on the SGCC website.
In October Lummus Technology was awarded a contract by Enter Engineering (Tashkent, Uzbekistan) to design and supply four cracker furnaces to more than double ethylene production at the facility in the Kashkadarya region of southwestern Uzbekistan. Expansion plans for the SGCC have been in process for several years, following a $1.3-billion engineering, procurement, and construction contract undertaken by Uzbekneftegaz with Enter Engineering, which has progressed the expansion to the detailed design phase.
Local press reports in Uzbekistan have previously outlined proposed plans by Uzbekneftegaz to build a new gas chemicals cluster at a provisional cost of $4.25 billion using MTO technology, with up to 10 downstream polymer derivatives plants producing up to 250,000 metric tons/year of polypropylene (PP), 100,000 metric tons/year of synthetic rubber, 100,000 metric tons/year of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and ethylene–vinyl acetate (EVA), and up to 150,000 metric tons/year of ethylene glycol (EG) and PE.
As per MRC, LyondellBasell, the world’s leading licensor of polyolefin technologies, announced that the Amur Gas Chemical Complex project, being implemented by SIBUR Holding PJSC, the largest integrated petrochemicals company in Russia, has selected LyondellBasell’s Spheripol technology for a new facility.
According to MRC's DataScope report, Russian companies increased external purchases of polypropylene in November, imports reached 20,400 tonnes against 17,900 tonnes a month earlier. Thus, overall PP imports into Russia reached 202,000 tonnes in January-November 2020, compared to 167,400 tonnes a year earlier. Purchasing of all grades of propylene polymers in foreign markets increased, with homopolymer PP imports accounting for the most noticeable rise.
MRC