Mexico newest oil refinery now seen working at half capacity in mid-2023

MOSCOW (MRC) -- Mexican state oil company Pemex's newest refinery will reach half of its crude processing capacity in July, the national president said, marking the latest shift in timing for the project's operations, said Reuters.

The Olmeca oil refinery, being built next to the Dos Bocas port, is set to be Pemex's eighth when it comes on line. It is key to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's plan to make the country self-sufficient in gasoline and diesel, ending longstanding heavy dependence on imports, mainly from U.S. refiners.

Describing the construction of the refinery in his home state, Tabasco, as having happened in "world record time," Lopez Obrador said "on July 1, it will begin to process 170,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil."

By September 15, the day before Mexican Independence Day, it would process its full capacity of 340,000 bpd and yield 280,000 bpd of gasoline and diesel, Lopez Obrador said, posting on Twitter.

The president did not specify whether the refinery would produce gasoline or diesel before July 1 or whether the date would mark the first barrels of crude processed there.

Last July, at the Gulf Coast facility's symbolic inauguration, Energy Minister Rocio Nahle said the first barrel of fuel from Olmeca would be produced this month, December.

The president has put run Pemex at the center of his energy agenda, even as critics have questioned the economic logic of the new facility, the cost of which was initially budgeted at about USD8 B but has since ballooned to more than USD15.4 billion.

The Olmeca refinery has been one of the leftist president's signature public works projects since he took office in late 2018. He initially said it would begin producing this year.

We remind, Pemex reported its third quarter net loss narrowed to USD2.58 billion (52.0 billion pesos), but said it had suffered from increased sales costs as well as currency exchange losses as the peso weakened against the dollar.
The company posted a net loss of 52.0 billion pesos for the three months through September, compared with a loss of 77.2 billion pesos in the same period of 2021. The red ink came despite a 56.5 percent jump in revenue, to 602 billion pesos, thanks to higher energy prices and strong demand.

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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Dow Chemical experiences Compressor shutdown at its Cracker due to freezing weather, said Polymermis.

The Cracker is located in Freeport, Texas, USA with a Propylene production capacity of 80,000 Tons/Year and Ethylene capacity of 725,000 Tons/Year.

The process upset was due to low steam temperature from an upstream supplier. The furnace feed was reduced as low as possible to enable shutdown of equipment.

We remind, Dow announced the launch of V PLUS Perform™ next, an evolution of its legacy V PLUS Perform™ polyurethane technology for insulated metal panels. The offering brings together the high-performance energy efficiency and fire safety features of V PLUS Perform™, with low carbon and circular ingredients designed to customer specifications.

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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Topsoe to move ahead on setting up solid oxide electrolyser plant in Denmark, said the company.

Topsoe has announced that its board has approved the final investment decision (FID) to start the construction of the "world's largest" solid oxide elctrolyser cell (SOEC) electrolyser manufacturing plant in Herning, Denmark.

The plant will have a production capacity of 500 MW/y with an option to expand to 5 GW. Construction of the plant will start in 2H 2022.

We remind, Topsoe has been chosen as technology provider to Ascension Clean Energy (ACE), an industrial scale low carbon hydrogen-ammonia joint venture project in Louisiana, US, by Clean Hydrogen Works (CHW), Denbury Carbon Solutions and Hafnia.

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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Jio wins IOCL order for providing SD-WAN solution that will power IOCL’s retail automation and critical business processes, such as payment processing, daily price updates, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) software and network monitoring with enterprise-grade connectivity, Quality of Service (QOS) and 24x7 support across 28 states and 8 union territories, said Polymerupdate.

JioBusiness, the Enterprise arm of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd will be deploying and managing SD-WAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network) for IOCL across its 7,200 retail outlets for a period of 5 years.

Speaking on the win, Prateek Pashine, Head Enterprise, Reliance Jio said, "It is a matter of great pride for Jio to have been selected by IOCL for this prestigious project. We look forward to support IOCL’s digital transformation journey by implementing the largest SD-WAN network in the country with our ‘Made in India’ managed network solution. Our extensive experience in large scale deployments equip us with the technical expertise to support IOCL in achieving higher performance benchmarks across their network and leverage Jio’s connectivity at each of the 7,200 sites. This will in fact be one of the largest deployments of SD-WAN solution in India across any Industry as well as in the Oil & Gas Industry across Asia. Currently the solution deployment is in an advanced stage with 2,000+ Retail outlets already onboarded on Jio’s SD-WAN setup”.

The current deployment is testimony to strong product, robust processes, and learnings from the thousands of WAN links deployed by Jio in offices, factories, and warehouses in various geographies for customers across Government, Banks, Large and Small Businesses.

We remind, India is taking most of Russia’s Urals crude oil loading in December as it remains top buyer for a second month in a row, according to traders and Refinitiv data. Volumes and India’s share of the exports are expected to rise month on month despite a shorter loading plan for Russia’s Western ports, traders said. In November India accounted for about 53% of the total tanker shipments of the grade – the highest level on the record.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- A large-scale reconstruction has been completed at the Volgograd refinery, said Hyddrocarbonprocessing.

The project included modernization of the CDU-VDU-5 crude distillation unit with production capacity of 3.5 MMtpy and the solvent extraction unit with production capacity of 300, 000 tpy. Over 230 core equipment items were installed and technologically outdated units were decommissioned. The share of Russia-made equipment installed during the reconstruction exceeded 70%. The construction site spanned the area of 34 thousand square metres; investments into the project exceeded 12 B roubles.

The implementation of the project will increase amount of petroleum feedstock refined by 400 thousand tonnes per year, as well as intensify production of kerosene and diesel fractions. Thanks to introduction of modern technological and digital solutions, energy efficiency of the refinery will increase and its CO2 intensity will decrease.

In 2021, LUKOIL commissioned a high-viscosity index oils production complex at its Volgograd refinery. The investment in the facility amounted to about 10 B roubles.

We remind, PJSC LUKOIL became one of the leaders of ESG-indices of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP): Responsibility and Transparency and Sustainability Vector. The 2022 index participant list was compiled on the basis of RAEX-600 Top 100 rating of the largest Russian companies and the Moscow Exchange Index companies list. The ESG-indices calculations were based upon public reports of the enterprises. The assessment took into account 44 indices and 73 indicators that reflect economic, environmental, social and governance aspects of sustainable development.
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