Vietnam refinery boosts production amid concern on fuel import costs

Vietnam's Binh Son refinery has ramped up its production to meet domestic fuel demand and was operating at 109% of its designed capacity, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The 130,000-barrel-per-day facility, owned by Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical accounts for a third of Vietnam's demand for refined petroleum products. "The refinery could increase its operations further, to 110% of capacity, to stabilize the market," Binh Son deputy chief executive Cao Tuan Si said in a government statement.

It comes days after several filling stations in southern Vietnam closed or limited their sales, citing financial difficulties, according to state media. The government said the refinery in central province of Quang Ngai sold 5.8 MM cubic meters of fuel in the first nine months of this year, and its inventory is running low.

On Wednesday, the Ministry of Industry and Trade asked the State Bank of Vietnam to help local fuel traders have better access to foreign currencies to pay for imports, as they face steep increase in prices. Vietnam's refined fuel imports in the first nine months of this year rose 22.7% from a year earlier to 6.52 MMt, but the import value rose 131% to $6.8 B, according to government customs data.

We remind, Binh Son refinery will undergo major maintenance next year, its owner Binh Son Refining and Petrochemical said. The 130,000-barrel-per-day refinery has been in operation for 13 years and its equipment is facing risks of aging and erosion, the company said in a statement. It did not give an estimate for how long the maintenance might take.
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ExxonMobil Corp agreed to sell its Billings, Montana, refinery and related pipeline properties to Par Pacific Holdings Inc for USD310 MM, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The sale ends a years-long effort by the U.S. oil giant to further reduce its refining footprint and concentrate production on plants along the U.S. Gulf Coast and in the Midwest. It also has been selling oil producing properties to boost returns. "ExxonMobil is focused on investing in facilities where we can manufacture higher-value products such as lubricants and chemicals," said Karen McKee, the head of the oil company's product solutions unit.

The deal for the 63,000-barrel-per-day refinery is expected to close in the second quarter of 2023, Exxon said in a statement. Par Pacific was one of several independent refiners eying the plant and looking to invest some of this year's record refining profits to expand its assets, according to people familiar with the matter.

Profit margins for processing crude into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel hit five-year highs in the United States earlier this year, helping the sales appeal. Rising travel and fewer refineries from pandemic-shutdowns have pushed the average U.S. gasoline retail price to USD3.84 a gallon this week, up from USD3.36 a year ago.

Included in the sale are the Silvertip Pipeline, Exxon's interest in the Yellowstone Pipeline and Yellowstone Energy LP and its interests in products terminals in Montana and Washington. Under the deal, Par Pacific will continue supplying fuel to Exxon and Mobil-branded stations in the region.

Exxon put the Billings facility on the market under a plan to reduce its U.S. refining footprint to three Gulf Coast refineries - in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Baytown and Beaumont, Texas - and a 251,800 bpd refinery in Joliet, Illinois.

We remind, Cyclyx International, ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell announced they have signed an agreement to advance development of a first-of-its-kind plastic waste sorting and processing facility in the Houston area. The new facility addresses a critical missing link in the plastic waste supply chain by connecting community recycling programs to new and more advanced recycling technologies that have the potential to take a much wider variety of plastic materials.
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A flash fire at Indian Oil Corp's Haldia refinery in India injured three people on Monday, local media reported, as per Reuters.

"The workers sustained burn injuries after hot water fell into the gas mixing plant, leading to a flash fire," a report in India Today said, adding there were no casualties and that the area has been sealed due to the incident. IOC was not immediately available for comment outside of normal business hours.

In December last year, a fire killed three people and injured 44 during maintenance-related work at the refinery.

Indian Oil Corp is India's biggest refiner.

We remind, Shell reported flaring at its 404,000-barrel per day (bpd) Pernis refinery in the Netherlands due to a malfunction at one of the site's installations on Oct. 12. "Due to a malfunction on one of our installations, we are forced to flare," Shell Pernis said on its Twitter account, adding that it was investigating the cause of the incident.
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LyondellBasell and Shakti Plastic Industries, India's largest plastic scrap recycler and waste collection company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to form a joint venture to build and operate a fully-automated, mechanical recycling plant in India, said the company.

The plant is intended to process rigid packaging post-consumer waste and produce 50.000 tonnes of recycled polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) per year, equivalent to the single-use plastic waste produced by 12.5 million citizens. It is envisaged that the new facility will become the largest mechanical recycling plant in India and is estimated to start at the end of 2024. LyondellBasell will market the recycled products produced by this joint venture adding volume to its Circulen Recover range of existing PE and PP materials to help meet increasing demand by converters and brand owners in India for recycled polymer materials.

"The proposed joint venture will allow us to address the issue of plastic waste in the second most populated country in the world and expand our circular polymer product offering to India," says Yvonne van der Laan, LyondellBasell Executive Vice President, Circular and Low Carbon Solutions. "Combining our respective expertise with Shakti Plastic Industries will create an innovative system that can be scaled as the circular economy grows."

Once established, the joint venture will leverage each partner's strengths. With the development of a recycling infrastructure in India, Shakti Plastic Industries will provide structure and formality to the waste collection process to secure materials to be used at the new venture. LyondellBasell will apply its long-standing leadership in innovative plastic production technology, vast experience in product development and strong knowledge of the polymer markets in India.

We remind, LyondellBasell and 23 Oaks Investments, Leiferde/Lower Saxony, Germany, signed an agreement to create Source One Plastics, a joint venture that will build an energy efficient, advanced plastic waste sorting and recycling facility in Germany. Using renewable energy from wind and biomass, the new unit is designed to process the amount of plastic packaging waste generated by approximately 1.3 million German citizens per year. This waste is not recycled today and is mostly incinerated.
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SK geo centric (SKGC), a South Korean-based global leader in polypropylene (PP) production, and PureCycle Technologies, Inc. signed a joint venture agreement to operate the first Polypropylene recycling plant in Asia, said the company.

SKGC will make a joint investment with PureCycle to build a plastic recycling plant in Ulsan, South Korea with an annual capacity of up to 60,000 tons. The plant, which is currently expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2025, will turn contaminated plastic feedstock into ultra-pure recycled ("UPR") resin that can be infinitely reused and recycled.

Each company will have 50/50 ownership of the joint venture. SKGC will bring marketing capabilities related to market development, strategy, and sales to the venture while PureCycle will provide their patented purification recycling technology / IP and contribute technical capabilities. PureCycle is uniquely capable of removing odors, colors and other contaminants from PP waste feedstock and transforming it into an Ultra-Pure Recycled ("UPR") resin that can be continuously reused. PureCycle is close to completing its first purification plant in Ironton, Ohio, and broke ground on a second recycling facility in Augusta, Georgia earlier this year.

With the JVA signed, SKGC and PureCycle will move forward with plans to open the facility by 2025. PureCycle has also agreed to provide SKGC with certain first rights to participate with PureCycle should PureCycle pursue expansion in the Asian region. This agreement is expected to expand SKGC's global market reach.

SK Innovation is part of the South Korean conglomerate SK Group, whose subsidiary SK ecoplant recently acquired DY Indus and DY Polymer which produce recycled polyethylene terephthalate (R-PET).

Another unit of the conglomerate, SK chemicals, has partnered with Chinese firm Shuye Environmental Technology to build a chemical recycled R-PET plant in China which is expected to start operations by 2024.

We remind, We remind that, as MRC informed earlier, South Korea's SK Global Chemical shut its small No. 1 naphtha-fed steam cracker in Ulsan permanently on Dec. 10, 2020, due to aging-related issues. The No. 1 steam cracker was able to produce 200,000 mt/year of ethylene and 140,000 mt/year of propylene. The company will keep normal operations of its No. 2 steam cracker at the same location. The No. 2 unit is able to produce 660,000 mt/year of ethylene, 350,000 mt/year of propylene and 110,000 mt/year of butadiene.

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