MOSCOW (MRC) -- A pair of New York businessmen filed a lawsuit in a US court seeking to block Mexico's state oil company Pemex from taking control of a Texas refinery, claiming the sale would raise US gasoline prices, reported Reuters.
Royal Dutch Shell in May agreed to sell its majority stake in the 302,800 bpd Deer Park refinery outside Houston to Pemex, its long-time partner in the plant, for about USD596 MM.
The lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in Houston last week, alleges a sale would lead to "substantially less(en) competition" in gasoline and "significantly increase" the plaintiffs' energy costs. They asked the court to block the sale permanently or force Pemex to divest its holdings.
The deal has been delayed by an ongoing review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a national security group that can block or set restrictions on foreign purchases of US businesses. The CFIUS launched a second 45-day review that halted Pemex's plans to complete the sale this year.
Pemex did not respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for Shell, the CFIUS and US Treasury Department declined to comment.
Mexican President, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has said the deal would move Mexico closer to energy self-sufficiency. He has promised to replace fuel imports by producing more domestically. Mexico this year imported about 60% of its motor fuel needs.
Lopez Obrador has complained that the 28-year-old JV with Shell had not been good for Mexico as dividends have been not been repatriated.
Aaron Hagele and Andrew Sarcinella, owners of a Mt. Vernon, N.Y., coin-operated laundromat who filed the lawsuit, said their business would suffer "an incalculable but evident" effect if more of Deer Park's output is exported.
As MRC informed previously, Royal Dutch Shell plc. said in November that its petrochemical complex of several billion dollars in Western Pennsylvania is about 70% complete and in the process to enter service in the early 2020s. The plant's costs are estimated to be USD6-USD10 billion, where ethane will be transformed into plastic feedstock. The facility is equipped to produce 1.5 million metric tons per year (mmty) of ethylene and 1.6 mmty of polyethylene (PE), two important constituents of plastics.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing PE and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,047,100 tonnes in the first ten months of 2021, up by 17% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,226,530 tonnes in January-October 2021, up by 26% year on year. Supply of propylene homopolymers (homopolymer PP) and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding stat-copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers) decreased significantly.
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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