North American chemical railcar traffic rose 0.9%

North American chemical railcar traffic rose 0.9% year on year to 45,887 loading for the week ended 25 February – marking the first increase after 22 straight declines, according to the latest freight rail data by the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

Loadings rose in Canada and Mexico but continued to fall in the US. For the first eight weeks of 2023 ended 25 February, North American chemical rail traffic was down 4.0% year on year to 357,193, with US traffic down 8.0%, to 253,310 loadings.

In the US, chemical railcar loadings represent about 20% of chemical transportation by tonnage, with trucks, barges and pipelines carrying the rest. In Canada, chemical producers rely on rail to ship more than 70% of their products, with some exclusively using rail.

We remind, North American chemical railcar traffic fell for a 21st straight week, with loadings for the week ended 11 February down 2.6% year on year to 46,254, led by a 5.8% decline in the US. For the first six weeks of 2023 ended 11 February, North American chemical rail traffic was down 5.2% year on year to 264,053 railcar loadings, with US traffic down by 9.1%, to 187,166 loadings.

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Linde plc announced its Board of Directors has declared a 9% increase in the company's quarterly dividend to USD1.275 per share, said the company.

This marks the 30th consecutive year of quarterly dividend increases on the company’s common stock.

The dividend is payable on March 28, 2023 to shareholders of record on March 14, 2023.

We remind, the year 2023 has started on a busy note for Linde’s plant engineering arm. For starters, Norwegian energy group Equinor has awarded the company a Front-End Engineering Design (FEED) contract for its H2H (Hydrogen to Humber) project in northeast England. In the plant’s design, Linde Engineering’s hydrogen and air separation technologies will be combined with Johnson Matthey’s Carbon Hydrogen (LCH) technology. A separate operation and maintenance service contract has been awarded to UK-based industrial gases company BOC, also Linde-owned.

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KBR announced that its ammonia technology has been selected for a large-scale one million tons per annum low-carbon ammonia facility in the Middle East GCC region, said the company.

Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide the technology license, basic engineering design, proprietary equipment and catalyst for the low-carbon ammonia plant. The project reinforces the region’s focus to emerge as a leader in low-carbon fuels by capitalizing on ammonia as a vector for clean hydrogen.

“We are honored that our leading low-carbon ammonia technology has been selected for this world-scale energy transition project,” said Doug Kelly, KBR President, Technology. “This project will be amongst the first large energy transition projects to come onstream in the world and we are excited to be part of this journey with several global industry leaders.”

KBR is the world leader in ammonia technology with approximately 50% market share of licensed capacity. Since 1943, KBR has licensed, engineered, or constructed over 250 grassroot ammonia plants worldwide.

We remind, KBR announced that BP Exploration (Shah Deniz) Limited has awarded an optimization stage engineering services contract to SOCAR-KBR (SKLLC) for the Shah Deniz compression project in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea.

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Motiva Enterprises shut the large coker on Monday at its 626,000-bpd Port Arthur, Texas, refinery, people familiar with plant operations said, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The 110,000-bpd DCU-2 coker is scheduled to be closed for two weeks of repairs to an overhead pipe, the sources said. A Motiva spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.

Once the pipe repair is complete, Motiva plans to shut the 105,000-bpd diesel-producing hydrocracker (HCU-2) and 54,000-bpd coker (DCU-1) for 40 days of planned overhauls.

Cokers convert residual crude oil from distillation units into either feedstocks for motor fuels or petroleum coke, a substitute for coal.

The hydrocracker uses catalyst in the presence of hydrogen under high heat and pressure to convert gas oil into diesel and other mother fuels. The Motiva refinery is the largest by capacity in the United States.

We remind, Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) announced, Jan. 18, the 100% acquisition of Motiva Trading by Aramco Trading Co. (ATC), and the launch of Aramco Trading Americas LLC (ATA), a wholly-owned subsidiary of ATC based in Houston, Texas.

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Venator is in the process of restarting its TiO2 and functional additives production at Duisberg site in Germany during the first quarter of 2023, after production was idled in Q4 2022 and staff were furloughed, due to lower demand, higher costs and economic impacts, according to a recent company statement/Q4 earnings call.

Venator made it clear that it is not economically viable to continue TiO2 production at Duisberg longer term and it is at risk of permanent closure, unless economic conditions significantly improve.

The company will continue to produce functional additives and UV filters at Duisberg and will transfer certain TiO2 specialty production to other manufacturing sites with lower production costs.

We remind, Venator Materials named three new members to its board of directors, all of whom are affiliated with private equity firm SK Capital Partners (New York, New York). The appointments come after SK Capital acquired a 39.75% stake in Venator for USD100 million.

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