Ingevity chairman Richard Kelson passes away

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ingevity says that its chairman Richard Kelson passed away on 13 February at the age of 74, according to Chemweek.

The cause of death has not been disclosed. The company says its “board will select a new chairman over the next several days who will preside over the regularly scheduled board meetings later this week.”

Kelson had been Ingevity’s chairman since its spin-off from WestRock in 2016. He was named interim president and CEO in February 2020 following the resignation of Michael Wilson, and held the role until the appointment of John Fortson, Ingevity’s current president and CEO, on 1 September 2020.

Ingevity’s board, management, and employees have expressed their deepest condolences to Kelson’s family, and the company says it will make a donation in his memory to the Penn Center for Research on Coronavirus.

As MRC reported earlier, in November 2020, Ingevity said it intends to challenge a decision of the US District Court for the District of Delaware regarding a patent-infringement complaint brought by Ingevity against BASF.

And in December 2020, BASF said it would pursue antitrust claims in a US court in Delaware related to Ingevity’s business practices in the evaporative emissions control market. The case concerns BASF’s EvapTrap-branded scrubbers for evaporative emissions control.

We remind that BASF said late last week it was restarting one of its steam crackers at its Ludwigshafen complex in Germany after operations were halted last Wednesday due to a technical issue. The naphtha cracker produces ethylene and propylene, and is one of two crackers on the site. One has a production capacity of 420,000 metric tons/year, with the other’s capacity at 240,000 metric tons/year, according to IHS Markit data.

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).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Marathon Oil Corp has laid off around 100 U.S. employees, or about 5% of its total workforce, a company spokeswoman told Reuters, days after the oil and gas producer cut salaries for top executives and board members, said Reuters.

Although oil prices have raced back above the pre-pandemic level of $60 per barrel in recent months, producers are focusing on improving balance sheets instead of raising output, as demand forecasts hinge on vaccine rollouts.

Marathon Oil's spokeswoman said the company's actions were part of its "commitment to continuously optimize our cost structure."

It had about 2,000 full-time employees worldwide at the end of 2019, according to its latest available employment figures, with 74% working in the United States.

World oil demand in 2021 will rebound more slowly than previously thought, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said on Thursday, adding to a series of downgrades as the impact of the pandemic lingers.

The company is expected to join other U.S. oil producers in posting an annual loss when it reports fourth-quarter results on Feb. 17.

As MRC informed previously, Marathon Petroleum Corp plans to operate the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker (FCC) at its 585,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Galveston Bay Refinery in Texas City, Texas. The 140,000 bpd FCC restarted on Sunday, 12 April, after repairs following a March 23 brief power outage that shut the unit.

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

According to MRC's DataScope report, last month, Russian companies actually kept the November volume of external PP purchases, imports amounted to 21,300 tonnes. Thus, overall PP imports into Russia reached 224,000 tonnes in January-December 2020, compared to 182,800 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

MOSCOW (MRC) -- OMV (Vienna, Austria) says it will invest jointly with sustainability-focused bank Kommunalkredit (Vienna) in the construction of an electrolysis plant for the production of green hydrogen at OMV’s Schwechat refinery in Austria, reported Chemweek.

A total of about EUR25 million (USD30 million) will be invested, with OMV and Kommunalkredit to split the cost equally.

The 10-megawatt (MW) polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolysis facility will produce up to 1,500 metric tons/year of renewable hydrogen, it says. The plant is expected to come online in the second half of 2023. The hydrogen will be used to hydrogenate bio-based and fossil fuels, substituting grey hydrogen at the refinery, it says.

The new plant will cut OMV’s carbon footprint by up to 15,000 metric tons/year of carbon dioxide (CO2), OMV estimates. “We deliberately opted for green hydrogen production on an industrial scale as we see the potential it holds, for lower-carbon road use as well as for reducing CO2 emissions in industrial operations,” says OMV’s Thomas Gangl, chief downstream operations officer. The company's previously announced climate targets include reaching net-zero carbon emissions in its operations by 2050 or sooner.

OMV and its majority-owned subsidiary Borealis also have their ongoing ReOil pilot plant situated at Schwechat. The plant produces synthetic oil out of waste plastic, which is fed into the refinery to produce feedstock for Borealis' adjacent olefins and polyolefins plants.

As MRC informed earlier, OMV (Vienna, Austria) says it is investing EUR40 million (USD48 million) to expand and modernize a steam cracker and associated units at its refining and petrochemicals complex at Burghausen, Germany. The upgrade will increase the site’s ethylene and propylene production capacity by 50,000 metric tons/year. Following a planned turnaround of the refinery, the revamped cracker and petchem units are expected to start operations in the third quarter of 2022. Initial groundwork is already underway ahead of the upgrade.

Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and 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, exluding producers' inventories as of 1 January, 2020).
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro sent a bill proposal to Congress that would alter how state fuel taxes are set to reduce volatile pump prices following a threat by trucker drivers to strike over high diesel costs, said Reuters.

In a statement, Bolsonaro's office said under the proposal states would need to submit proposed ICMS tax rates on fuels to the National Fiscal Policy Council. Any increase in the tax would only go into effect after 90 days, to make the market more predictable, the statement said.

Truck drivers had threatened to strike on Feb. 1 but few followed through on the stoppage, following Bolsonaro's remarks that he would take action to try to lower fuel prices. The incident raised fears that Brazil may begin to intervene in how state-led oil firm Petroleo Brasileiro SA sets prices, as happened under previous governments.

Reuters was first to report that Petrobras, as the state firm is known, had revised its pricing policy to track international parity over a 12-month period instead of every three months, feeding concerns of interference.

Petrobras, Bolsonaro and other government officials have denied any interference in how the company sets fuel prices.

We remind that Petrobras may need more than a year to divest its stake in Braskem, said Andrea Almeida, Petrobras CFO, in early July, 2020. She said during the company"s recent webinar that Petrobras plans to give more time for potential investors to make offers for the company"s assets, including for its refineries and stakes at its petrochemical and fuel distribution affiliates. The divestment of Petrobras"s stake in Braskem in 2020 would be desirable but "might not be possible" as the COVID-19 pandemic has changed market conditions, she said. The company plans to close part of its refinery sales in 2021. In December, Roberto Castello Branco, CEO of Petrobras, said that he wants to sell the company"s stake in Braskem within a year. Petrobras owns 32.15% of Braskem.

We also remind that Braskem is no longer pursuing a petrochemical project, which would have included an ethane cracker, in West Virginia. And the company is seeking to sell the land that would have housed the cracker. The project, announced in 2013, had been on Braskem's back burner for several years.

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).

Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras is an integrated energy firm. Petrobras' activities include exploration, exploitation and production of oil from reservoir wells, shale and other rocks as well as refining, processing, trade and transport of oil and oil products, natural gas and other fluid hydrocarbons, in addition to other energy-related activities.
MRC

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Maire Tecnimont S.p.A., through its subsidiary NextChem, and Essential Energy USA Corp. have executed a front-end engineering design contract, as well as a Memorandum of Understanding for the construction of a new biorefinery in South America for the production of renewable diesel, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Subject to the client’s Final Investment Decision, the biorefinery will produce 200,000 tpy of high-quality renewable diesel from advanced bio-feedstocks. NextChem will be the exclusive EPC contractor. The project is expected to be operational in 2023.

The biorefinery will transform natural oil, waste vegetables oils and tallow into hydrogenated vegetable oils (HVO), also known in the market as renewable diesel. Renewable diesel is a fuel which is chemically identical to petroleum-based diesel with the advantage of improved performance. It is used worldwide as a drop-in biofuel in diesel vehicles, with no engine modifications. Furthermore, the renewable diesel allows a carbon intensity reduction, for greenhouse gas emissions, above 80% vs. petroleum-based diesel.

Maire Tecnimont Group has exhaustive experience in EPC contracting in Energy Services including in South America. Additionally, NextChem has been active in energy transition projects with a focus on deploying solutions in carbon footprint reduction, through the development of new technologies for the production of biofuels and biochemicals from biobased feedstock and circular chemicals from waste.

As per MRC, Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. announced that its subsidiaries Tecnimont S.p.A. and KT - Kinetics Technology S.p.A. have signed with SOCAR’s subsidiary Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery two Engineering, Procurement and Construction contracts, as part of the Modernization and Reconstruction of Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery in Baku, Azerbaijan. SOCAR is the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic. The overall contracts’ value equals to approximately USD 160 million.

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).
MRC