Saudi oil giant Aramco posts record USD161 billion profit for 2022

Saudi Arabia’s state-controlled oil giant Aramco on Sunday reported a record net income of USD161.1 billion for 2022 — the largest annual profit ever achieved by an oil and gas company, said Cnbc.

Aramco said net income increased 46.5 percent over the year, from USD110 billion in 2021. Free cash flow also reached a record USD148.5 billion in 2022, compared with USD107.5 billion in 2021.

“This is probably the highest net income ever recorded in the corporate world,” Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said on a Sunday earnings call. The results are nearly triple the profit that oil major ExxonMobil posted for 2022, bolstered by soaring oil and gas prices through last year, along with higher sale volumes and improved margins for refined products.

Oil and gas prices surged at the start of 2022, with western sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine steadily tightening access to Moscow’s supplies, particularly seaborne crude and oil products. Oil prices have since pulled back more than 25% year-on-year, with hot inflation and rising interest rates overshadowing a more bullish demand outlook from China. Brent and WTI prices fell 6% last week alone. Brent last traded at around USD80 dollars per barrel.

“We are cautiously optimistic,” Nasser said. “If you consider China opening up, the pickup in jet fuels and the very limited spare capacity, we are cautiously optimistic in the short to mid-term [that] markets will remain tightly balanced.”

Aramco raised its fourth-quarter dividend by 4% to USD19.5 billion, to be paid in the first quarter of 2023. Aramco also said it would issue bonus shares to eligible shareholders as a result. “We’re aiming to sustain [the dividend] at this level,” Aramco Chief Financial Officer Ziad Al-Murshed told the earnings call. “We have the financial strength to go through the ups and downs of the cycle."

We remind, Saudi Aramco has agreed to take a minority stake in a new powertrain engine company that French car maker Renault SA and China's Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd plan to set up jointly, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
A report in January said that Aramco has been involved in advanced discussions to take a stake of up to 20% in a previously announced but still-unnamed Geely-Renault powertrain company that would develop and supply internal combustion engines (ICE) and hybrid technologies.

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Guanghui Energy has completed mechanical construction of a 100,000 tonne/year carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) demonstration project at Xinjiang, the company said.

The project has thus entered the stage of start-up and trial operation. It takes gaseous CO2 from the company’s coal-to-methanol plant, then compress, purify and liquify the gas to liquids for pipe transporting to oilfields for oil extraction.

This Demo project is estimated to help to cut CO2 emission by 100,000 tonnes each year and lift oil productions by 20%.

The company has targeted to establish a 3m tonne/year CCUS facility in Xinjiang.

We remind, QatarEnergy and Chevron Phillips Chemical Company (CPChem) marked the groundbreaking of the Golden Triangle Polymers Plant in Orange County, in Texas, U.S., marking the beginning of construction of the USD8.5-B world-scale petrochemical facility. The landmark event was attended by Senior QatarEnergy Executives as well as Mr. Bruce Chinn, the President and CEO of Chevron Phillips Chemical, Mr. Mark Lashier, the President and CEO of Phillips 66, in addition to several local elected and appointed officials.

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Evonik is expanding its capacity to produce MetAMINO (DL-methionine) on Jurong Island, Singapore, by 40,000 metric tons to around 340,000 metric tons per year, said the company.

The high double-digit million euro investment in this further technological development is to reach target capacity by the third quarter of 2024. The planned process optimization measures will improve the carbon footprint of MetAMINO® produced in Singapore by six percent.

"Increasing capacity for MetAMINO production in Singapore is another important step in the consistent implementation of our global methionine asset strategy, further improving supply security for our customers in Asia," says Dr. Gaetano Blanda, head of Animal Nutrition business line. "In the face of fragile supply chains, our strategy of producing MetAMINO® in three different regions of the world has proven its value to our customers."

At the core of the methionine strategy are the three production hubs in Singapore, Mobile (Alabama, USA) and Antwerp (Belgium). All three of Evonik's world-scale plants are based on best-in-class technologies and are designed to grow with the expanding global market through modular expansions.

Evonik's methionine plants in Singapore, which came on stream in 2014 and 2019, were already the largest production complex for DL-methionine in the world, with an annual capacity of around 300,000 metric tons of MetAMINO®. "The additional capacity of 40,000 metric tons is primarily intended to accompany the growth of our customers in Asia and continue to offer the highest product quality and security of supply – now even more sustainably," says Noel Kim, head of Region Asia for Evonik Animal Nutrition.

The company has succeeded in maintaining its technology and cost leadership in DL-methionine for decades by continuously optimizing its processes and equipment: "We are particularly proud of the highly innovative new processes that are now being implemented in Singapore", says Dr. Jan-Olaf Barth, head of Evonik's Essential Nutrition product line. "For example, we are taking another major step toward process efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint by implementing an electrolysis unit for green hydrogen supply and various energy integration measures."

These technological adjustments are an important building block in the sustainability strategy of the Nutrition & Care division. The carbon footprint of the additional volume will be reduced by 50 percent thanks to process improvement measures. This reduces the carbon footprint of the entire MetAMINO production in Singapore by six percent.

We remind, Evonik's coating additives business line is launching two new wetting agents, TEGO Wet 290 and TEGO Wet 296. Both can be used for various substrates such as wood, plastic, and metal surfaces. The main areas of application are waterborne automotive and wood coatings. The two wetting agents improve wetting and anti-cratering properties and enhance flow and leveling.

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Finnish engineering and technologies company Coolbrook on Thursday announced a collaboration with Saudi Arabia’s petrochemicals major SABIC on piloting its RotoDynamic Reactor (RDR) technology for decarbonised ethylene production, said the company.

RDR technology aims to replace the burning of fossil fuels with electrification in steam crackers. SABIC agreed to assess the potential for industrial deployment of RDR technology at its production sites.

In related news earlier this week, Coolbrook and Linde Engineering signed a collaboration agreement at the Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen, Netherlands, to accelerate the development, industrialisation and deployment of RDR technology.

Coolbrook has a RDR pilot project at Geleen. The company aims to establish RDR technology as industry standard by 2030, it said.

It previously announced a co-operation with ABB for the automation, digitalisation, electric motors and variable speed drives for the technology.

We remind, SABIC participated in a ceremony to announce the first package of Shareek projects involving large companies in Saudi Arabia. The event was held in the presence of several dignitaries, senior businessmen and heads of major companies participating in the program. During the ceremony, SABIC announced a strategic project to manufacture catalysts, aiming to transform Saudi Arabia into a manufacturing hub for specialized materials in line with the national industrial strategy.

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The Czech Republic has invited transport ministers from 11 European Union counties to meet in Strasbourg on Monday to discuss emissions-cutting policies amid a dispute over the bloc's landmark policy to shift to electric vehicles, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Invited to the meeting are Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia and Finland, an EU official told Reuters. It is not yet confirmed which ministers will attend.

The meeting was initially planned to discuss a proposed EU law to tighten limits for vehicle emissions of health-harming pollutants like nitrogen oxides - a policy known as Euro 7. The Czech Republic, some other countries and industry groups have said they want to change it, calling it unrealistic and questioning the environmental benefits the law would bring.

But some EU officials said they now expect the meeting to discuss the countries' stance on the EU's law to end sales of new CO2-emitting cars in 2035. The bloc's main policy to speed up Europe's shift to electric vehicles got put on hold after Germany declared last-minute opposition to it.

Czech transport Minister Martin Kupka said last week, after meeting his German couterpart Volker Wissing in Berlin, that the country wanted changes to the 2035 ban on new CO2-emitting cars. "We will not support the limitation of combustion engines after 2035, unless there will be a clear and binding exemption for synthetic fuels," Kupka said on Twitter.

Germany's transport ministry last week demanded reassurances that sales be allowed of new cars with internal combustion engines after 2035, if they run on CO2-neutral fuels. The intervention surprised policymakers, since the European Parliament, the Commission and EU member states already agreed the car CO2 law last year after months of negotiations.

The policy was set to enter into force after a final vote this week, which was cancelled after Germany's opposition and has not yet been rescheduled.

Other opponents of the car CO2 law include Italy, Poland and a handful of other countries whose ranks have swelled since Europe's biggest economy signalled its opposition, EU officials said - raising the possibility of enough support to block it.

We remind, Synthos has announced that it will cease production of emulsion styrene butadiene rubber (E-SBR) at its Kralupy plant in the Czech Republic in the second quarter of 2023. The company said it had made the decision due to unpredictable utility costs, which have led to an unsustainable market environment for E-SBR for European producers; a direct result of the geopolitical situation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a company press release on 2 March.

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