PDVSA allocates heavy crude cargo to Italy's Eni

Venezuela's PDVSA has allocated an oil cargo to a unit of Eni for a February loading, the first to the Italian firm following a contract suspension this year by new management at the state-run company, people familiar with the matter said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Eni and Spanish oil firm Repsol in May last year received authorizations from the U.S. State Department to take the crude to Europe for outstanding Venezuela debt and dividends, an exception to U.S. oil sanctions on Venezuela.

The cargo allocations, which worked intermittently last year, had not happened this year amid a large audit instructed by PDVSA's new boss Pedro Tellechea to avoid failed payments by some customers. Eni received two cargoes of Venezuelan diluted crude in June-July and two more shipments in November. The crude was exported in Eni-chartered vessels and delivered partially to Repsol oil refineries in Spain, according to PDVSA's documents and vessel monitoring services.

The latest cargo assigned to Eni is scheduled to load through ship-to-ship transfers at Venezuela's Amuay STS area. PDVSA recently has struggled to receive larger tankers at its West coast ports due to infrastructure issues, the people said. Eni declined to comment on individual transactions but said it is operating "in compliance with the applicable sanction regimes."

Repsol and PDVSA did not reply to requests for comment. U.S. oil major Chevron, which also was authorized by Washington last year to receive Venezuelan oil cargoes for debt, in January exported 2.3 million barrels of Venezuelan heavy crude to the United States.

One cargo has been exported so far in February by Chevron to its Pascagoula, Mississippi, refinery and another is about to depart Venezuela, monitoring data showed.

We remind, PDVSA on Friday restarted the fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) of its 645,000 bpd Amuay refinery, the country's largest, following an outage that halted operations for eight weeks, three sources from the facility said.
Outages and unplanned maintenance often interrupt operations at PDVSA's aging 1.3-MM-bpd refining network, leading to fuel scarcity, especially of gasoline and diesel.

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Neste and Scania are piloting a digital solution that enables easy follow-up and verification of each truck's usage of renewable fuels, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Combining data from Scania Fleet Management Portal enriched with Neste's fuel emission data, the solution provides Scania’s fleet management customers with accurate, up-to-date data for their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reporting and sustainability communications. Customers can compare the climate impact of their use of Neste’s renewable fuels to fossil fuels and track their continuous progress towards climate targets.

Neste and Scania are testing the digital solution with the logistic companies HAVI and UFF. The solution combines data regarding where a certain truck has been refueled and how much it has driven, with data about the climate impact because of the use of Neste MY Renewable Diesel™ instead of fossil fuel. Until now, it has been a challenge to verify to what extent trucks really run on renewable fuels, as the very same trucks could also continue to run on fossil fuels. The digital solution now being tested hopes to solve this issue. Neste’s and Scania’s joint ambition is that the solution could in the future serve all fleet manufacturers and all types of renewable fuels.

We remind, Neste posted strong revenue and profit growth in its renewable fuels business even as its Chief Executive flagged the long-term need for new raw materials amid growing European demand for sustainable jet fuel.
The company has bet heavily on renewable fuels but is competing in a crowded space as fossil fuel majors enter the green fuel market, pushing up costs for used cooking oil and discarded animal fat. Neste estimates that the maximum available global capacity for waste and residue materials would be around 40 MMtpy.

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Nexus Circular has signed a long-term commercial agreement with Chevron Phillips Chemical (CPChem) for the supply of a significant volume annually of circular liquid feedstocks from a new advanced recycling facility, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

This long-term contractual commitment further strengthens CPChem’s relationship with Nexus for advanced recycled plastic feedstocks to produce Marlex Anew Circular Polyethylene.

Nexus has been supplying CPChem for over two years with consistent bulk shipments of ISCC PLUS certified materials. In December 2021, Six Pines Investments LLC, a wholly-owned sustainable investment subsidiary of CPChem, made a meaningful investment in Nexus to expand production at the Atlanta, Georgia, facility. Both companies are continuing discussions for future new expansion commitments.

Nexus Circular is a commercial leader in advanced recycling with a proven proprietary technology and a leading process design that converts landfill-bound films and other hard-to-recycle plastics into high-quality liquids which are then used to produce virgin-quality circular plastics. Since 2018, Nexus has been consistently supplying commercial volumes of circular liquid products, having diverted over 8-MM pounds of used plastics from landfill.

CPChem is targeting an annual production volume of 1-B pounds of Marlex Anew Circular Polyethylene by 2030. The proven, fully commercialized advanced recycling technology from Nexus repeatedly transforms difficult-to-recycle plastics into pristine new products to accelerate the transition to a circular economy for plastics.

Justine Smith, senior vice president of Petrochemicals at CPChem, said, “This contract with Nexus supports the transformation of used plastic into a new, useful resource, helping position CPChem to further scale our circular polymers program and deliver products the world needs for years to come.”

Clint Thompson, chief commercial officer at Nexus, said, “Nexus is delivering real-world scalable solutions to meet the outsized demands for virgin-quality recycled plastics. We are thrilled to collaborate with CPChem as we rapidly expand our innovation footprint.”

We remind, Chevron Corp. posted a record USD36.5 bn profit for 2022 that was more than double year-earlier earnings but fell shy of Wall Street estimates, undercut by an asset writedowns and a retreat in oil and gas prices.
The second largest U.S. oil producer's adjusted net profit for 2022 beat by about USD10 billion its previous record set in 2011. But USD1.1 B in writedowns in its international oil and gas operations in the fourth quarter left earnings short of forecasts for adjusted net profit of USD37.2 B.

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Aekyung Chemical plans to expand its surfactant plant in Vietnam, with the aim of targeting global markets in Southeast Asia, said Kedglobal.

The expansion of the plant, operated by the company's subsidiary AK VINA, will include the addition of high-value-added production lines for eco-friendly, low-stimulus, and natural surfactants.

The plant is expected to begin mass production in 2024, and the company aims to increase its overseas market share by increasing its production from 16,000 tons to 39,000 tons. The company cited growing demand from multinational companies operating in Vietnam for locally sourced surfactants.

"As the only synthetic surfactant production plant in Vietnam, we aim to establish a strong presence and respond to customer demands by offering high-value-added products," said Kim Joon-hyung, head of Aekyung Chemical's Living Chemical Business Division.

We remind, Aekyung Chemical, an affiliate of South Korea's Aekyung Group, has begun mass-producing eco-friendly plasticizers derived from recycled waste plastics, marking a first in South Korea. The company succeeded in developing the plasticizers and built specialized production facilities.

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U.S. environmental regulators conditionally approved plans for the owners of an idled refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands to remove chemicals that the watchdog argued present serious health consequences if accidentally released, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The idled St. Croix refinery, formerly the largest in the Western Hemisphere, was expected to boost overall supply in the Caribbean, a key transit point for petroleum shipments, but the EPA shut it after a few months of operation in May 2021 after chemical releases sickened neighboring residents.

Equipment corrosion at the refinery, formerly called Limetree Bay, presents a risk of fire, explosion or other "catastrophic" releases of hazardous substances, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last year. Regulators inspected the facility following an August 2022 fire within the petroleum coke conveyor loading system that burned for two weeks.

The refinery was sold for USD62 million in December 2021 to West Indies Petroleum and Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation, following the bankruptcy of its former private equity owners. The plant owners intended to restart the facility but the EPA said they let it fall into disrepair.

The EPA was particularly concerned about equipment containing ammonia, which can irritate or burn the eyes and skin, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which can cause nausea and headaches. The chemicals, they say, present "serious health consequences" to facility workers and the public if released.

In December, the EPA entered into a binding agreement with Port Hamilton Refining and Transportation to begin removing the ammonia, LPG and amine solution in early March and finish in the summer of 2023. Port Hamilton contractors will remove the anhydrous ammonia by transferring it to specially designed shipping container for sale or disposal, regulators said.

Contractors will transfer the LPG into shipping containers for off-island sale as useable products or for proper disposal, the EPA said. The EPA said it will display real time results from "around-the-clock" air monitoring during the removal process.

U.S. regulators say the new owners cannot restart the plant unless they obtain a Clean Air Act permit, which could cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take three years or more. The owners are appealing the decision, according to court filings.

We remind, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed increases in the amount of ethanol and other biofuels oil refiners must blend into their fuel over the next three years. The agency is also proposing incorporating electricity made from renewable biomass and used for electric vehicle into the program for the first time. The agency's long-awaited proposal will call for overall blending mandates of 20.82 B gallons in 2023, 21.87 B gallons in 2024 and 22.68 B gallons in 2025.

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