MOSCOW (MRC) -- By the end of 2021, Royal Dutch Shell will have just one operating crude oil refinery in the United States: The 227,400-bpd refinery in Norco, Louisiana, said Reuters.
Sources familiar with Shell’s plans say the company will likely hang on to the Norco refinery because of its role in supplying the company’s chemical plants. "Norco is integrated with them," one of the sources said of the refinery, 25 miles (40 km) west of New Orleans.
In addition to producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, the Norco refinery produces ethylene and propylene that go to the adjoining Shell Norco chemical plant and to the nearby Shell Geismar, Louisiana, plant. A Shell spokesman did not reply to a request for comment.
In May, Shell announced the sales of its Anacortes, Washington, refinery as well as the controlling interest in the joint-venture Deer Park, Texas, refinery. The company also sold its chemical refinery in Mobile, Alabama.
All three sales are to close in the fourth quarter of 2021. Shell’s shift out of refining to emphasize petrochemical production anticipates a fall in demand for fuels refined from crude oil as motor vehicles shift away from carbon-intensive fuels.
As early as 2014, Shell identified Norco’s gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker (FCC) as the more profitable at two Louisiana refineries then operated by the Motiva partnership between Shell and Saudi Aramco.
The partnership split in 2017 with Shell keeping the Norco and Convent refineries in Louisiana. Shell shut the Convent refinery in December after overhauling the FCC in 2018. Shell has configured the shut Convent refinery for a possible sale or restart, the company has said.
As MRC informed previously, in late May, 2021, Shell agreed to sell its controlling interest in a Texas refinery to partner Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) for about USD596 million. And in early May, Shell announced the sale of its 149,000 barrel per day (bpd) refinery in Washington to Hollyfrontier Corp.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 744,130 tonnes in the first four month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. At the same time, PP deliveries to the Russian market were 523,900 tonnes in January-April 2021, up by 55% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas shipments of PP random copolymers decreased.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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