Harvest to buy storm-hit refinery-turned-terminal from Phillips 66

Harvest Midstream will buy the Belle Chasse terminal in Louisiana from U.S. refiner Phillips 66, the privately held company said this week, a move that will boost its existing regional crude pipeline systems, said Reuters.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Phillips 66 had unveiled its plans in November last year to convert the 50-year-old facility, formerly known as Alliance refinery, into an oil and refined products terminal after the refinery was idled due to severe damage from Hurricane Ida.

The conversion allowed the 255,600 barrel-per-day refinery to take advantage of its position on the Mississippi River, 20 miles (32.19 km) south of New Orleans.

The facility sits on about 3,200 acres and has 1 MM barrels of active storage capacity, with two docks to load crude oil, Harvest said on Wednesday.

Phillips 66's shares rose 1.3% to USD103.98 in premarket trading.

We remind, Technip Energies has been awarded a contract for the supply of proprietary cracking furnaces for the 2,000,000 tpy ethane cracker for the Golden Triangle Polymers project, a joint venture between Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem) and QatarEnergy, along the Gulf Coast in Orange, Texas. This latest award is in line with our early engagement strategy with CPChem and QatarEnergy, which resulted in the selection of our proprietary ethylene technology and includes the successful completion of the ethylene license and Process Design Package (PDP).

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Maire Tecnimont S.p.A. announces that its subsidiary Tecnimont S.p.A. has been awarded an EPC (Engineering, Procurement e Construction) Lump Sum contract relating to the implementation of a petrochemical project, said Polymerupdate.

The overall value of the contract is approximately USD 1.3 billion and relates to the realization of a petrochemical plant together with its associated utilities and offsite facilities. The project’s scope of work entails complete engineering services, equipment and material supply, erection, and construction activities up to mechanical completion which is expected in 2026.

We remind, Maire Tecnimont’s subsidiary NextChem, through the associate company GCB Polymers, inaugurates a new re-processing and upcycling plant for polymers today in the Kezad Industrial Zone, in the UAE capital city Abu Dhabi. This new plant processes a very wide range of polymer products, from near to prime to the lower end of plant scraps, post-industrial and post-consumer waste, and also recycled polymers.

Maire Tecnimont S.p.A., a company listed on the Milan Stock Exchange, heads an international industrial group that is a leader in the transformation of natural resources (plant engineering in downstream oil & gas, with technological and execution competences). Through its subsidiary NextChem, it operates in the field of green chemistry and the technologies to support the energy transition. Maire Tecnimont Group operates in about 45 countries, through approximately 50 operative companies and about 9,300 people.

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The German government said Thursday that it has nationalized energy company Uniper after the European Union gave its blessing for it to rescue the gas supplier, said Reuters.

The government announced its plan to nationalize Uniper in September, expanding state intervention in the energy sector to prevent a shortage resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine. The deal built on an initial rescue package agreed in July and features a capital increase of 8 billion euros (USD8.5 billion) that Germany is financing.

Uniper's existing shareholders approved the measures on Monday. The EU's executive Commission gave its conditional approval on Tuesday. The government is obliged to reduce its stake to 25% plus one share by 2028, a deadline that can only be extended with the Commission's approval. Germany's finance and economy ministries said Thursday that the government has now taken a stake of some 99% in the company. Uniper's existing management remains in place.

Uniper was controlled until now by Finland-based Fortum. The Finnish government has the largest stake in Fortum. Before the war in Ukraine, the company bought about half of its gas from Russia, which started cutting deliveries to Germany in June and hasn’t supplied any gas to the country since the end of August.

Uniper has incurred huge costs as a result of those cuts because it was forced to buy gas at far higher market prices to meet its supply contract obligations. Last month, it said it had initiated proceedings to seek damages from Russia’s Gazprom at an international arbitration tribunal in Stockholm.

We remind, Uniper and Shell have awarded contracts for the design studies of the main hydrogen production and carbon capture plant for the proposed Humber H2ub project. The project aims to produce low-carbon hydrogen using gas reformation with carbon capture technology at Uniper’s Killingholme power station site on the South Humber bank in the UK. Air Liquide Engineering & Construction, Shell Catalysts & Technologies and Technip Energies have now been awarded contracts to deliver the process design studies.

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Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has chosen Senator Jean Paul Prates for the role of chief executive at state-controlled oil company Petrobras, said Upstreamonline.

Multiple media outlets in Brazil reported on Thursday that Lula has selected Prates for the coveted role of Petrobras boss and that he intends to appoint Senator Alexandre Silveira to head the country’s Mines & Energy Ministry.

Prates, a senator from Lula’s Workers’ Party, is a lawyer, economist and entrepreneur, who has also held the position of energy secretary in Rio Grande do Norte state.

He has worked for more than 25 years in the energy sector, with experience and expertise in oil and gas but an equally long track record in biofuels and other sources of renewable energy.

In 1997, he helped draft the petroleum law that opened the country’s oil and gas sector to foreign investors.

Born in Rio de Janeiro state, Prates made Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, his adopted home and, as energy secretary there, was instrumental in fostering a wave of investment in onshore wind.

We remind, Petrobras has started output at the Itapu pre-salt field in the Santos basin via the P-71 floating production, storage and offloading vessel. The P-71 FPSO, which features a processing capacity of 150,000 barrels per day of oil and 6 million cubic metres per day of natural gas, was deployed in water depths of 2010 metres. “We were able to anticipate production of the P-71 platform, which was originally scheduled for 2023,” said Petrobras production development director Joao Henrique Rittershaussen.

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A fire caused by an explosion on a key Russian gas export pipeline that claimed three lives has stopped burning about 24 hours after emergency services were alerted, according to authorities in the country’s Chuvashiya region, said Upstreamonline.

The incident took place near the village of Yambakhtino on a section of the Gazprom-operated Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod trunkline, which carries volumes from the state-controlled company’s core producing fields in West Siberia’s Yamal-Nenets region across Central Russia and Ukraine to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry’s regional office in Chuvashiya said firefighters on site reported that the fire had stopped at about 14:00 local time, a little more than 24 hours after reports of an explosion and fire near Yambakhtino on Monday. Residents voluntarily evacuated their children from the village.

Authorities said seven firefighting units were sent to the site of the fire, which witnesses estimated reached a height of between 25 and 30 metres. The Emergency Situations Ministry’s regional office said one possible cause of the incident involved a safety violation during planned pipeline maintenance.

Russian social media network Mash, which released the names of three contractors who died as a result of the explosion, suggested that maintenance works on the site had extended for at least 12 hours past the deadline for completion.

We remind, Russia's Transneft has received requests from Poland and Germany for oil in 2023, the state oil pipeline monopoly's head told Rossiya-24 TV, adding that supplies via the Druzhba pipeline's southern spur are expected to hold steady next year. The EU has pledged to stop buying Russian oil via maritime routes from Dec. 5, with Western nations also imposing price caps on Russian crude oil, but the Druzhba pipeline remains exempt from sanctions. Transneft's comments are at odds with suggestions last month that Poland aimed to abandon a deal to buy Russian crude.
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