AOC raises EMEA resin, vinyl ester prices on increased raw materials, logistics costs

MOSCOW (MRC) -- AOC (Collierville, Tennessee) says it is raising prices with immediate effect for its entire unsaturated polyester resins (UPR) portfolio and epoxy vinyl ester (EVE) range sold in the EAME region, due to continued increases in raw materials, logistics, and packaging costs, reported Chemweek.

Prices for its EVE products will rise by EUR300/metric ton (USD364/metric ton), with its UPR portfolio prices to increase by EUR250/metric ton. The increase is with immediate effect for all new deliveries or as contracts allow, it says.

“The pricing of liquid epoxy resin (LER), styrene, and other key raw materials has seen continued increases over the past months following outages across the globe and force majeure declarations in Europe,” says Fons Harbers, AOC's vice president/EAME marketing and sales. “Logistics and packaging costs have been increasing steadily. This leaves us no choice but to raise the prices of our products as a result,” he says.

AOC announced price increases in January this year and December 2020 for the same product ranges, citing the same reasons.

As MRC informed earlier, in October 2020, AOC, Kaprain and Spolchemie announced they had reached agreement on AOC acquiring the Unsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR) manufacturing operations located at the Spolchemie site in Usti nad Labem (Czech Republic). This footprint extension will allow AOC to further improve service and logistics to its customers in Central/ Eastern Europe as well as in Germany, and will make new products (e.g. based on recycled PET) available for customers around Europe.

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, overall estimated PET consumption in Russia was 71,830 tonnes in December 2020, up by 8% year on year. Russia's PET consumption in all sectors (injection moulding, fibers/filaments, films) exceeded the level of 2019 by 17%, totalling 717,310 tonnes.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Honeywell UOP selected GEA Refrigeration Technologies’ oil & gas team to supply engineered compression packages for a tail gas application at a refinery in Azerbaijan, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Utilizing GEA's most powerful screw compressor, the GEA model XH, the systems are designed for a modernization program at the refinery.

GEA's tail gas packages were selected for the project by Honeywell UOP as part of their Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) technology to supply high-quality hydrogen for the modernization of the Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery (HAOR) in Baku, Azerbaijan. Pure hydrogen is essential to the refining process, where it is used to decontaminate oil and facilitate catalytic processes that produce clean-burning fuels, including those that meet Euro V standards for vehicle emissions.

The PSA technology will help Azerbaijan meet the growing domestic demand for transportation fuels that meet the Euro V standards. Hydrogen technology is an important element of modernization program that will help the refinery in Azerbaijan to remain among the most advanced refineries in the region, further improving environmental protection along with the quality of life in Azerbaijan.

The modernization enables the refinery to process 7.5 million metric tons per annum of crude oil blended from local sources. Hydrogen is key in the refining process, being produced as a byproduct of refining and intentionally from a steam methane reformer. Honeywell UOP's PSA technology purifies this hydrogen so it essentially can be recycled into the refinery to remove impurities and to perform catalytic processes that transform crude oil into clean fuels and other products.

The purpose of these tail gas compression units is to receive the tail gas – a gas mixture composition with up to ~70% hydrogen – from the PSA System and keep stable pressure at the PSA discharge. Received gas is compressed up to 6,7 bar(g) and then cooled down to 40°C in the after cooler before it is returned to the customer’s system.

These units are based on an oil-flooded screw compressor and the oil is separated from the tail gas into two oil separators (main and final) in order to deliver the gas with less than 1 ppm of oil content. As an oil-flooded screw compressor, the oil circuit is provided for lubricating the internal part of the screw compressor. The oil circuit comprises two oil pumps (one in standby), a pressure control valve to keep the oil

pressure constant and an electro-pneumatic three-way control valve to maintain the oil flow to the compressor at a fixed temperature. The oil circuit also comprises two oil coolers (one in standby) with a common inlet and outlet line for the cooling water system. The discharged oil at high temperature, recovered in the oil separator, is cooled down by using cooling water as a medium.

All vessels and all heat exchangers are designed and manufactured according to ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) and TEMA R (Tubular Exchanger Manufacturers Association). GEA also provided the personnel protection with rock wool and aluminum and winterization of the entire oil circuit.

As per MRC, Honeywell announced a partnership with Princeps for petroleum refining supply chain solutions. Honeywell’s expertise in oil and gas planning will add Princeps’ petroleum solutions platform to its offerings to provide customers with industry-leading insights in determining the most profitable ways to operate their plants.

As MRC reported earlier, in May, 2020, Honeywell announced that Enterprise Products Partners L.P. will use Honeywell UOP’s C3 Oleflex technology in its second propane dehydrogenation plant, called "PDH 2". Located near Mont Belvieu, Texas, PDH 2 will produce 750,000 metric tons per year of polymer-grade propylene as part of Enterprise’s expansion of propylene manufacturing capacity.

Propylene is the main feedstock for the production of polypropylene (PP).

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2% year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - Woodside Petroleum expects strong buyer interest in the sale of a share of a new production unit at its Pluto LNG plant, top executives said on Thursday, a precondition for a planned USD11 B expansion at its Scarborough gas and Pluto project, said Reuters.

The renewed push by Australia's biggest independent gas producer on the 8-MMtpy expansion project comes after last year's COVID-19 induced collapse in oil and gas prices drove its underlying annual profit down 58% to USD447 MM. The result was well short of analysts' forecasts, which sent its shares down as much as 3.7% after the result was released on Thursday.

Woodside is looking to sell a 50% stake in the new production unit, or train, at the Pluto LNG plant in Western Australia, which will be fed with gas from the Scarborough project. Selling a stake would be key to avoiding a capital raising or a credit downgrade.

The company suspended the sale process last year when oil prices slumped but is now optimistic about luring buyers. "We're now sitting in a much more attractive pricing environment," Chief Financial Officer Sherry Duhe told analysts.

"The buyer appetite for infrastructure assets just continues to grow. And so we do believe that there'll be strong interest in that asset," she said. Woodside's other growth project underway is the Sangomar oil development off Senegal, where its partner FAR Ltd has just received a tentative takeover offer from Russia's Lukoil.

Woodside last year pre-empted Lukoil from buying Cairn Energy's stake in Sangomar, as it was concerned the project could then fall foul of U.S. sanctions on Russia. However Chief Executive Peter Coleman said on Thursday there was no concern with Lukoil becoming a partner through a takeover of FAR, as FAR's stake in the Senegal project was below the 33% equity threshold for U.S. sanctions.

Woodside stuck to its forecast for fiscal 2021 output of 90-95 MMb of oil equivalent, lower than its production in 2020. On a statutory basis, Woodside posted an annual loss of USD4.03 B, its first loss in eighteen years, hit by USD4.37 B in asset write-downs it took at the half-year.

As per MRC, Wood has secured a contract valued at over USD120 million with Sinopec Hainan Refining and Chemical Limited Company (Sinopec) to provide engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services to expand its refinery development in the Hainan Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in South China. Once completed, the ethylene renovation and expansion project will produce up to one million tonnes of ethylene derivatives and refined oil on an annual basis and is expected to boost economic growth in China’s downstream sector by more than 100 billion yuan (USD14.1 billion). Output from the Hainan FTZ will serve ethylene demand across China and globally.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2% year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Encina Development Group (Encina; The Woodlands, Texas) and Flint Hills Resources say they are exploring a collaboration to produce renewable chemicals and fuels from plastic waste, reported Chemweek.

The two have signed a non-binding term sheet that proposes construction of a facility in Corpus Christi, Texas. Flint Hills would market the aromatic products produced at the Encina Corpus Christi facility and work with its affiliates to market renewable aromatic products from other Encina plants in the US.

“Our work with Encina is an exciting addition to our growing portfolio of renewable product and technology investments,” says Francis Murphy, senior vice president/chemicals at Flint Hills. “Renewable aromatics and bioplastics are playing an increasingly import role in the product value chain and reducing environmental impacts while still delivering on all the various products that make modern life possible.”

“Flint Hills Resources is an excellent partner for Encina,” says David Schwedel, executive director at Encina. “They have deep domain industry expertise and an aligned focus on delivering highly-valued and sustainable products to the marketplace.”

In December 2020, Encina and Braskem announced a collaboration for the production of circular propylene from plastic waste.

As MRC informed previously, in November 2019, 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.

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

According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2% year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, polypropylene (PP) shipments to the Russian market reached 1 240,000 tonnes in 2020 (calculated using the formula: production, minus exports, plus imports, excluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020). Supply of exclusively PP random copolymer increased.
MRC

1. Wood Mackenzie: Energy transition to drive refinery and petrochemicals integration

MOSCOW (MRC) -- 2020 was a difficult year for the world’s refineries as the coronavirus pandemic reduced refinery utilization and OPEC+ supply restraint narrowed crude price differentials, said Hydrocarbonprocessing. Despite this, integrated refinery and petrochemical sites significantly outperformed their fuels-only peers, according to Wood Mackenzie. One of the most highly integrated sites in China, Hengli, generated a net income of more than USD1.4 B during 1Q to 3Q 2020, at a time when most of the refining industry was incurring significant losses. Alan Gelder, Wood Mackenzie VP Refining, Chemicals & Oil Markets, said: “Over the coming years, the energy transition and the associated electrification of the passenger car fleet will slow the pace of global gasoline demand growth and drive it into decline after 2030.

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