Sinopec starts first carbon capture, storage facility, plans another two by 2025

China's Sinopec Corp said on Monday it has put into operation the country's largest carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) facility in east China, and plans to build two more plants of similar size by 2025, said Reuters.

The state oil giant is one of the leading companies building pilot CCUS projects in China, part of the country's goal to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030.

The new CCUS project, which started construction just over a year ago, involves capturing carbon dioxide produced from Sinopec's Qilu refinery in eastern Shandong province during a hydrogen-making process, and then injecting it into 73 oil wells in the nearby Shengli oilfield.

Sinopec has estimated that 10.68 MMt of carbon dioxide will be injected into the oilfield over the next 15 years, boosting crude oil production by nearly 3 MMt.

Currently the CO2 from the Qilu refinery is transported by trucks to the oilfield, but Sinopec expects to complete a pipeline by the end of the year to move the CO2, which will be the first of its kind in China.

"While China's CCUS remains at an experimental stage, it's on a par with the levels of global peers, although lagging in some key technological know-how," Sinopec said in a press release.

Sinopec will explore setting up a CCUS research and development center by 2025, focusing on developing frontier technologies such as combining CCUS with wind and solar power, CCUS with hydrogen energy and biomass, the company said.

Last year Sinopec captured and stored more than 1.52 MMt of carbon dioxide. It aims to build another two pilot projects over the next few years in nearby Huadong and Jiangsu oilfields.

We remind, Sinopec and PetroChina -- two of the world's biggest energy firms -- will apply for "voluntary delisting" of their American depositary shares, the companies said in separate statements. The Aluminum Corporation of China, also known as Chalco, as well as China Life Insurance and a Shanghai-based Sinopec subsidiary.

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According to our latest Drilling Productivity Report, the EIA estimates that crude oil production in the Eagle Ford region in southern Texas will average 1.2 MMbpd during September 2022, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Despite recent increases, less crude oil is being produced in the Eagle Ford region than before the pandemic—1.4 MMbpd in April 2020—and much less than the all-time high of 1.7 MMbpd in March 2015.

Because prices increased, we estimate that economically recoverable oil resources (the amount of recoverable oil that producers believe can be profitably produced) in the Eagle Ford formation, increased to 8.4 billion barrels in the first half of 2022, an increase from 0.5 B barrels in 2020. Between 2020 and the first half of 2022, crude oil prices more than doubled, according to our analysis, incentivizing future development in previously marginal areas.

This analysis of the Eagle Ford formation focuses on proved reserves and economically recoverable resources. Proved reserves are volumes of crude oil and natural gas that data demonstrate with reasonable certainty can be recoverable in future years from known reservoirs, considering existing economic and operating conditions. In contrast, economically recoverable resources vary considerably depending on price and cost assumptions. Economically recoverable resources represent a less certain estimate of future crude oil and natural gas volumes and production.

If prices are too low to provide a return on the investment of developing the well, producers will not invest in drilling the well. The Eagle Ford formation produces both crude oil and natural gas, so profitability is not only based on past crude oil or natural gas production rates but also on producers’ forecasts of future prices for natural gas and crude oil.

We remind, UK imported no crude oil or refined products from Russia in June for the first time on record, according to UK trade data, following phased sanctions on imports of Russian oil over the invasion of Ukraine. As a result of the UK's phase-out of Russian oil and gas imports, there were no flows of refined oil, crude, gas or coal, coke and briquettes from Russia in June, the Office for National Statistics said. The UK government said early March the country would phase out Russian oil imports by the end of 2022 and end imports of Russian liquefied natural gas "as soon as possible" thereafter.
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Tosoh Corp. has unveiled a Yen200 billion (EUR1.47 billion) investment plan to expand production capacity and improving earnings during the 2023-2025 period, said European-rubber-journal.

Under the medium-term business plan, Tosah will increase output of a range of products, including polychloroprene rubber, flame retardants and other additives in rubber production. Tosoh manufactures chloroprene rubber at its site in Nanyo, Japan.

In 2019, the Japanese supplier started a two-year debottlenecking project to raise capacity of the plant by 3 kilotonnes per annum (ktpa) to 37ktpa. The chemical group's business plan announcement, issued 10 Aug, did not provide details on the size of the capacity expansions.

Under the medium-term programme, Tosoh aims to increase its operating income to Yen150 billion by 2025, from the Yen144 billion forecast for 2022. The company also expects sales to increase from an estimated Yen890 billion this year to Yen1,160 billion by 2025.

As MRC informed earlier, Tosoh Corporation, a major Japanese petrochemical producer, has announced it will permanently stop producing and selling toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and TDI-related products from its Nanyo complex in Japan, effective April 2023. Despite the continuous implementation of measures to improve profitability, the environment surrounding this business has become increasingly severe in recent years, and there are no prospects for improvement, the company stated. Tosoh currently produce 25,000 t/y of TDI at the site.

As MRC reported earlier, Tosoh resumed normal production at its caustic soda plant in Nanyo City (Nanyo, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan) with the capacity of 1.188 million tons of caustic soda and 1.06 million tons of chlorine per year on June 24, 2021. The company experienced some technical issues when restarting after a scheduled repair. Since June 12, the caustic and chlorine production capacity utilisation was reduced by about 30%.

Founded in 1935, Japan's Tosoh Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, is an international chemicals and specialty materials company. The main activity of the company is the production of chlor-alkali and petrochemical products, which include ethylene, propylene, polypropylene, polyethylene and synthetic rubbers. The Tosoh Group globally includes over 130 companies with manufacturing facilities and offices in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, UK, Greece, Switzerland and the USA.
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Sulzer Chemtech (GTC Technology) and BASF have signed a MoU with the goal of advancing technologies for renewable fuels and chemically recycled plastics that will further expand the partners’ portfolio of sustainable solutions, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The companies enter a strategic partnership to reduce the carbon intensity of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. They will also drive the development of innovative, cost-effective chemical processing solutions to improve the conversion of plastic waste into new plastics.

The collaboration combines complementary areas of expertise, integrating Sulzer Chemtech’s capabilities in licensed processing technologies and mass transfer equipment with BASF’s cutting-edge high-performance adsorbents and catalysts.

Sulzer Chemtech, an established licensor and engineering partner for process technologies like hydrotreating for renewable fuels and chemical recycling of plastics as well as purifying the resulting products by liquid-liquid extraction technologies, is leading efforts to harness greener resources that can help global producers achieve their net-zero ambitions. BASF Process Catalysts is driving multiple initiatives aimed at turning plastic waste into a secondary raw material, for example with its newly developed PuriCycle portfolio, as well as providing adsorbent and catalytic materials to produce clean and renewable fuels.

"Global plastic pollution and sustainable mobility are challenges that we can solve by joining forces with partners”, said Detlef Ruff, Senior Vice President, Process Catalysts at BASF. “This is why we at BASF are involved in key strategic collaborations aimed at protecting our planet's resources and transforming the way we do business. We are excited to work with Sulzer Chemtech and use our combined strengths to address plastic pollution and drive the adoption of more sustainable fuels."

Torsten Wintergerste, President at Sulzer Chemtech, concludes: “Our process technology development team is continuously looking at new ways to support more sustainable, circular practices. The MoU with BASF allows us to broaden the scope of our portfolio and will lead to improved value offerings in both renewable fuels and the plastics recycling value chain. We look forward to working together to deliver advanced technologies that help our customers accelerate their path to net zero carbon emissions."

We remind, BASF Coatings (Guangdong) Co., Ltd. (BCG) has expanded the production capacity of automotive refinish coatings at its coatings site in Jiangmen, Guangdong Province in South China. With the completion of the expansion in July 2022, BASF’s annual production capacity of automotive refinish coatings will be increased to 30,000 metric tons. This is in line with the company’s pledge to maintain customer proximity, as well as to strengthen BASF’s position as a leading and innovative coatings supplier to the automotive industry in China and the rest of Asia.
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МОСКВА (MRC) -- Most of the units at bp Plc’s 435,000 barrel-per-day Whiting, Indiana, refinery were out of production on Thursday following a Wednesday night fire, said sources familiar with plant operations, said Reuters.

The company has said some units were shut by the electrical fire and those units would be restarting. The timing of the restart had not been determined by midday Thursday, the sources said.

The fire affected utilities to multiple units at the refinery, and bp has called in most of the refinery’s employees to work on repairs and restarts, the sources said.

The incident at the Whiting refinery, the largest in the Midwest and bp’s largest anywhere in the world, drove up motor fuel prices in the Chicago market.

Chicago CBOB gasoline gained 30.5 cents per gallon, trading 3 cents above the futures benchmark on the New York Mercantile Exchange, market participants said.

Chicago ultra-low sulfur diesel gained 17 cents, trading 20 cents above diesel futures.

We remind, Oil major BP is considering selling oil assets in Mexico to shift its focus to renewable energy sources in the country Bloomberg News. The oil company, in partnership with France’s TotalEnergies, Equinor, Hokchi Energy and Qatar Petroleum, signed three exploration contracts six years ago. The oil major has divested itself of its stake and is in the process of returning the blocks it secured to Mexico’s regulator, the National Hydrocarbons Commission, according to a company spokesman.

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