MOSCOW (MRC) -- LyondellBasell Industries expects to sell its Houston refinery in the “coming quarter or two,” said Chief Executive Bob Patel during a Friday conference call with Wall Street analysts, reported Reuters.
The chemical maker said on Sept. 8 it was considering strategic options for the refinery, located on the Houston Ship Channel. LyondellBasell tried to sell the refinery in 2016 but was stymied by unit fires and multiple unit shutdowns before it took the plant off the market in a dispute over price.
“Our aim is to move towards the transaction in the coming quarter or two,” Patel said. “We still continue to believe that the best value that this refinery can create is by being part of a system where it can be optimized from crude purchasing to logistics, to the coproduct processing.”
The Houston refinery ran at 99% of its 263,776 barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity in the third quarter of 2021, as the chemical maker continues to market the plant to potential buyers, the company said on Friday. The refinery ran at 260,000 bpd in the third quarter, 12,000 bpd more than it did in the second quarter of 2021, recording operating income of USD25 million in third quarter, up from a USD95 million loss in the second quarter, the company said.
As MRC informed earlier, three US subsidiaries of Dutch chemical giant LyondellBasell Industries N.V. (LBI) have agreed to make upgrades and perform compliance measures estimated to cost USD50 million to resolve allegations they violated the Clean Air Act and state air pollution control laws at six petrochemical manufacturing facilities located in Channelview, Corpus Christi, and LaPorte, Texas, and Clinton, Iowa, according to the Department of Justice and the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) statement.
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 1,638,370 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 989,570 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas shipments of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
LyondellBasell is one of the largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies in the world. Driven by its employees around the globe, LyondellBasell produces materials and products that are key to advancing solutions to modern challenges, like enhancing food safety through lightweight and flexible packaging, protecting the purity of water supplies through stronger and more versatile pipes, improving the safety, comfort and fuel efficiency of many of the cars and trucks on the road, and ensuring the safe and effective functionality in electronics and appliances. LyondellBasell sells products into more than 100 countries and is the world"s largest producer of polymer compounds and the largest licensor of polyolefin technologies. In 2020, LyondellBasell was named to Fortune Magazine"s list of the "World"s Most Admired Companies" for the third consecutive year.
MRC