Saudi Aramco net profit soars 82% in Q1 on high oil prices

Saudi Aramco posted a record first-quarter net profit of riyal (SR) 148bn (USD39.5bn), up by about 82% year on year, thanks for strong crude oil prices and sales volumes, as well as improved downstream margins, said the company.

The energy giant’s total hydrocarbon production in the first three months of the year stood at 13m boe/day (barrels of oil equivalent per day), Saudi Aramco said in a statement on 15 May. Capital expenditure in January-March 2022 was USD7.6bn, it said.

“Aramco continues to expect capital expenditure to grow until around the middle of the decade, to support the company’s long-term strategy realization,” it said. During the quarter, Saudi Aramco made a final investment decision to jointly develop a major integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in China with North Huajin Chemical Industries Group Corporation and Panjin Xincheng Industrial Group.

The joint venture to be called Huajin Aramco Petrochemical Company (HAPCO) plans to build a 300,000 bbl/day refinery and petrochemicals complex. Saudi Aramco expects its full-year 2022 capex of USD40bn-50bn, which was 25-57% higher than the USD31.9bn spent in 2021, amid elevated oil prices.

At 11:42 Singapore time (03:42 GMT), Brent crude was trading at USD109.65/bbl, while WTI was at USD108.74/bbl.

As per MRC, Aramco is exploring further collaboration with Thailand’s national oil company PTT, as it expands its downstream presence in Asia. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding at a ceremony in Bangkok on May 11. The companies aim to strengthen cooperation across crude oil sourcing and the marketing of refining and petrochemical products and LNG. Other potential areas of activity include blue and green hydrogen and various clean energy initiatives.

Saudi Aramco, officially the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, is a Saudi Arabian national oil and natural gas company based in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco's value has been estimated at up to USD10 trillion in the Financial Times, making it the world"s most valuable company. Saudi Aramco has both the largest proven crude oil reserves, at more than 260 billion barrels, and largest daily oil production.
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Automotive supplier Faurecia and global waste management company Veolia have signed a cooperation and research agreement to jointly develop compounds based on recycled materials for automotive interior modules in Europe, said Sustainableplastics.

The companies aim to achieve an average of 30% of recycled content by 2025. Targeted applications, say the companies, are instrument panels, door panels and centre consoles.

Increasing the use of recycled plastics will help to reduce CO2 emissions and improve cars’ environmental performance. Veolia has been providing polypropylene compounds twith recycled content to the automotive industry in France for over 5 years. Today, however, automotive interiors are still mostly made of virgin material.

This collaboration project with Faurecia will enable the automotive product range to be extended to vehicle interiors.
“As demand for recycled plastic increases across all sectors in the context of resource scarcity, there is a need to recycle more plastic waste streams. The collaboration with Faurecia allows us to increase our supply of secondary raw materials to the automotive industry through the development of high value-added compounds,” said Estelle Brachlianoff, Group Chief Operating Officer at Veolia.

Faurecia has been exploring the use of alternative materials in its interior products for many years. In 2011, the company became the first automotive supplier to introduce a complete range of bio-composite cockpit solutions offering a 28% lower CO2 footprint that of conventional all-plastic counterparts. Now, more than a decade later, these products have already been installed in around 13 million vehicles. In 2021, In line with its CO2 neutrality objectives, Faurecia created a cross-Business Group Sustainable Materials division to engineeer and manufacture new material solutions.

The partnership with Veolia is aimed at accelerating the introduction of new sustainable materials and their time-to-market, said Patrick Koller, CEO at Faurecia, as well as contributing to reducing plastic waste and strengthening the circular economy. “This agreement will also strongly contribute to Faurecia’s roadmap towards CO2 neutrality for scope 3, based on the principles of using less, using better and using longer,” he explained. Veolia will start the production of these secondary raw materials at its existing recycling sites in France starting from 2023.

As per MRC, Faurecia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the sale of its Automotive Exteriors business worldwide to Compagnie Plastic Omnium. The deal does not include Faurecia’s composites business, its plant for Smart in Hambach, France, or two joint ventures in Brazil and China. The business to be sold, which includes bumpers and front end modules, had 2014 sales of EUR2 billion (USD2.2 billion), according to a news release. About 90 percent of the business is located in Europe.
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Technology group Heraeus Holding GMBH, a Germany-based family-owned portfolio company with roots going back to the seventeenth century, has announced that it has acquired a majority stake in perPETual Technologies, a leading PET recycling company based in Kleinostheim, Germany, said Sustainableplastics.

The company also announced that perPETual Technologies would be renamed revalyu Resources GmbH. The reasons for the the name change is to drive global expansion under one brand, said Heraeus. Founded in 2007, revalyu Resources built and commercialised in Nashik, India the world’s first chemical full glycolysis recycling plant.

Based on the company’s proprietary depolymerisation technology, the process first converts post consumer PET bottles into sustainable esters (monomers), the base chemical building blocks for anything polyester materials. These are then filtered to remove all impurities before being re-polymerised. The result is the production of a very pure sustainable PET polymer of a quality equal to PET polymers produced from virgin petrochemicals. The process also uses 91 percent less energy and 75 percent less water than conventional processes for producing PET polymers. It can be used in all PET production processes.

According to Jan Rinnert, Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors and CEO of Heraeus Holding GmbH, the global strength of Heraeus will provide the investment, infrastructure and strategic support needed to accelerate revalyu’s growth.

Heraeus aims to develop the business into one of the world’s largest and technologically advanced PET recycling companies.The aim is to recycle 100 million bottles a day of used PET Bottles by 2026, which will be a big step toward solving the PET waste problem.

Hereaus features in the FORTUNE Global 500 list. The Group employs some 14,800 employees in 40 countries aand generated revenues of EUR31.5 billion in financial 2020. Heraeus is one of the top 10 family-owned companies in Germany.

As per MRC, Songwon and Heraeus announced that they have signed a co-operation agreement to jointly develop and market high end specialty chemicals for the electronics industry. This new co-operation combines Songwon's strong expertise in R&D and chemical manufacturing with Heraeus' technical capabilities and high reputation in the electronics chemical industry, thereby broadening both companies' access to the global electronics market.
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Dow Inc. has announced the launch of a new high-performance polyolefin elastomer (POE) from plant-based feedstock, said Sustainableplastics.

Engage Ren, is a “more sustainable brand extension” to the company’s Engage range POEs and is produced using renewable energy and feedstocks such as used cooking oil, Dow said 3 May. The brand was enabled by Dow’s Ecolibrium technology, which transforms sustainably sourced waste and by-products from other industries, into plastics.

As only waste residues or by-products from an alternative production process are utilised, the raw feedstock materials don’t consume extra land resources nor compete with the food chain, Dow added.

According to the materials supplier, the polymers deliver “equivalent performance” in the final application as fossil-fuel counterparts and do not require reformulation. Dow said it has begun supplying the plant-based polymers for use in Crocs’ manufacturing process of its Croslite material.

The materials, according to Dow, will have a lower CO2 impact compared to Croc’s current sustainable materials.

As per MRC, Dow has announced plans to expand its global alkoxylation capacity in the US and Europe to meet increasing demand across a wide range of fast-growing end-markets where the company is delivering 10% to 15% annual growth rates, from home and personal care to industrial and institutional cleaning solutions and pharmaceuticals. The faster-payback, higher return investments announced today will increase Dow's capacity, while maintaining current carbon emissions levels through the use of efficient technologies and site improvements. These investments in the US and Europe are backed by supply agreements with customers, including leading consumer brands, and expected to come online in 2024 and 2025, respectively.

As MRC informed before, earlier this month, Dow and Plastogaz SA announced a strategic investment which will help simplify the process of converting plastic waste to feedstock and provide another carbon-efficient option to keep plastic waste out of landfills and the environment. The collaboration marks another milestone in Dow’s ongoing mission to protect the climate and close the loop on plastic waste.

Dow combines global breadth, asset integration and scale, focused innovation and leading business positions to achieve profitable growth. The Company's ambition is to become the most innovative, customer centric, inclusive and sustainable materials science company, with a purpose to deliver a sustainable future for the world through our materials science expertise and collaboration with our partners. Dow's portfolio of plastics, industrial intermediates, coatings and silicones businesses delivers a broad range of differentiated science-based products and solutions for its customers in high-growth market segments, such as packaging, infrastructure, mobility and consumer care. Dow operates 106 manufacturing sites in 31 countries and employs approximately 35,700 people.

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Russian fuel oil arrivals in the UAE oil hub of Fujairah are set to jump sharply to about 2.5 MM barrels this month, data shows, in a sign that flows of Russian oil and refined products are shifting away from Europe, as per Reuters.

The arrivals in May are about 125% higher than April levels, and about 24% higher than a recent record in November 2021, the data from oil analytics firm Vortexa showed.

Russian fuel oil exports from the Black Sea ports of Taman and Novorossiysk to Fujairah are fairly common, but Baltic exports are much rarer and those flows have jumped sharply in April and May, the data showed.

One trader said the increased volumes were mainly going into the bunkering pool in Fujairah- the world's third largest bunkering hub after Singapore and Rotterdam. Trading Russian crude and oil products has become more difficult as Western buyers avoid it in response to the Ukraine conflict.

Large companies, including Shell, BP and TotalEnergies have already said they have stopped buying cargoes of crude oil and refined products of Russian origin. Major global trading houses are planning to reduce crude and fuel purchases from Russia's state-controlled oil companies as from May 15 to avoid falling foul of European Union sanctions on Russia.

Fuel oil, is a by-product of refining crude oil into lighter, cleaner products like road fuels and is used as a shipping fuel, in power generation, or as feedstock for some refining units which upgrade it into other fuels.

We remind, Shell has agreed to sell over 400 retail fuel stations and a lubricants blending plant in Russia to Lukoil.
Known as Shell Neft, the business operates fuel stations in central and northwest Russia, while the Torzhok blending plant is around 200km northwest of Moscow. Shell has committed to gradually withdrawing from all Russian hydrocarbon activities. Deal terms were not disclosed.
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