MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petrobras plans to invest USD2.5bn expanding a refinery in northern Brazil and completing a base-oils project in Rio de Janeiro state, the state-controlled energy producer said.
Under the base-oils project, Petrobras will invest USD1.5bn integrating the Duque de Caxias refinery (REDUC) with the GasLub Itaborai project. GasLub should produce 12,000 bbbl/day of Group II base oils and 93,000 bbl/day of S-10 diesel and jet fuel, Petrobras said.
For the expansion project, Petrobras plans to invest USD1bn to complete the second train of its Abreu e Lima refinery (RNEST) in Pernambuco state. The second train will add 145,000 bbl/day of crude-processing capacity, increasing the refinery's throughput rate to 260,000 bbl/day from 115,000 bbbl/day.
Petrobras plans to complete the refinery expansion in 2027, it said. RNEST is one of the refineries that Petrobras plans to sell. Petrobras could spend USD600m on projects that would allow it to co-process soybean oil in its existing refinery units and to produce renewable diesel and jet fuel at new units.
REPAR is another refinery that Pertrobras plans to sell. Another project would allow the co-processing of soybean oil at the Paulinia (REPLAN) and Presidente Bernardes (RPBC) refineries in Sao Paulo state. These projects would allow the refineries to produce diesel with 5-7% renewable content. Petrobras plans to keep these two refineries.
We remind that in August 2021, Petrobras hired JPMorgan Chase & Co as an advisor to sell its stake in the petrochemical company Braskem SA.
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 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 1,868,160 tonnes in the first nine months of 2021, up by 18% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,138,510 tonnes in the first nine months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Supply of propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
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