Turkish ministers discuss oil exports with Iraqi Kurdistan PM

Turkey's foreign and energy ministers met the head of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan regional government for talks on Thursday, including on oil exports, which Turkey has blocked from the region since March this year, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, met with Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and its Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar in Erbil, the government of the region said in a statement.

"We discussed a range of regional issues, including bilateral Iraq-Turkey relations and also with the Kurdistan Region, as well as the mechanism of exporting the Kurdistan region’s oil," Barzani said in a joint press conference with Fidan following the meeting.

Neither official gave any further information on Iraq's northern oil exports and did not say if a deal had been reached to resume crude flows through Turkey.

Turkey stopped the oil flows on March 25 after losing a long-standing arbitration case brought by Iraq. Bagdad deems exports from the region via Turkey's Ceyhan port as illegal.

Iraq's oil minister has been in Ankara this week where he and his Turkish counterpart failed to reach an agreement to restart the oil exports, although both sides agreed on further talks.

We remind, The CEO of Brazil-based Braskem, Roberto Bischoff, said that the company that is Latin America?s biggest petrochemical organization is seeing atypical scenarios in plastic resin markets that include very large flows of plastic resin exports from the world?s top producer countries into the less developed areas because much of the Northern Hemisphere demand remains challenged. “Atypycal scenarios are common in the industry but this scenario specifically includes a few aspects that really aggravate this,” Bischoff said at the end of the second quarter conference call.

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The third phase of China's largest single coastal oil storage facility has been completed and went into operation on Wednesday in Qingdao port, in the eastern province of Shandong, the state media outlet China News reported, as per Reuters.

The third phase of the Dongjiakou crude oil reserve has a total capacity of 1.2 million cubic meters, taking the combined capacity of the project to 5.2 million cubic meters, state media said.

The facility is operated by the provincial government-backed Shandong Port Group, which owns and operates the province’s top ports at Qingdao, Rizhao, Yantai and Baohaiwan.

The port group handles approximately a quarter of China’s crude oil imports, the world’s largest.

We remind, rising prices of a popular Russian crude sold to China are poised to peak soon as more independent refiners are likely to switch to cheaper oil from Iran which has ramped up exports to fresh 4-1/2 year highs in August, several trade sources said. OPEC+ supply cuts and strong demand from large Chinese refiners for Russian oil have pushed prices for the ESPO Blend grade exported from the Pacific port of Kozmino to the narrowest discounts since the Ukraine war started.

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India’s petroleum consumption increased to a record high in the first seven months of 2023 but growth has slowed markedly as the rebound from the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns is completed, said Reuters.

The economy is being hit by the same combination of rapid inflation and slowing global trade that has hit other major economies across South and East Asia. Petroleum consumption increased to 135 million metric tons in the first seven months of 2023 from 128 million metric tons in the same period in 2022.

The increase in the first seven months was equivalent to roughly 255,000 barrels per day (bpd), down from growth of 415,000 bpd in 2021/22. Oil consumption growth of roughly 5% to 6% per year is consistent with the same reported growth in manufacturing output.

But it compares with growth of more than 1.0 million bpd in U.S. oil production in the first five months of 2023. It has not been fast enough to absorb the extra crude and tighten the global market at a time when consumption has been depressed in North America, Europe and China.

The relatively sluggish growth in India’s consumption has therefore added to downward pressure on crude petroleum prices so far in 2023.

We remind, Indian refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd is meeting up to 23% of its oil needs through discounted Russian grades. Indian refiners, which rarely used to buy Russian oil, have been snapping up discounted barrels after many Western countries shunned purchases from Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine. HPCL's Russian oil intake is limited by the configuration of its refineries, Joshi said, but the company is maximizing the use of these cheaper so-called opportunity crudes, he added, helping "ringfence" it from risks arising from high oil prices.

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Brenntag announced an expansion of the existing distribution agreement with KRONOS International to now cover countries in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), in addition to North Asia (China, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan), South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Australia and New Zealand, said the company.

KRONOS is a global producer and marketer of value-added titanium dioxide pigments, or TiO2, a base industrial product and an effective whitening agent used in a wide range of applications. The distribution agreement includes KRONOS products catering to Brenntag Specialties' customers in Life Science segments which include pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and personal care.

“This expanded distributor agreement is a great opportunity for KRONOS to expand our partnership with a global leader like Brenntag,” said Dennis Werner, president EMEAA, KRONOS International, Inc. “With their technical expertise, formulation know-how and strong sales coverage throughout Asia Pacific, Brenntag is the preferred distributor partner whom we trust to help serve and delight our customers.”

“We are thrilled with the expanded distribution agreement with KRONOS, to serve our customers in applications such as pharmaceutical and personal care with stringent demands for high purity, safe, and reliable chemicals and ingredients,” said Francois Bleger, regional president of Brenntag Specialties Asia Pacific. “It is also an acknowledgment of Brenntag’s continuous efforts to be the preferred partner for our supplier partners, committed to bringing value-added products and solutions to new territories and markets.”

We remind, Brenntag, the global market leader in chemicals and ingredients distribution, has become the exclusive distributor of Nouryon’s specialty polymers in the United State and Canada. As the sole distributor of Nouryon’s proprietary LumaTreat™ polymers, Brenntag can offer a portfolio including the patented LumaTreat™ smart-tagged polymers, Aquatreat™, Versaflex™, and Versa™ polymers which offer scale control and dispersancy.

Founded in 2005, Saifu distributes personal care ingredients, coatings, emulsion polymerization, and cleaning chemicals and provides related solution services. The company currently has over 100 employees and serves more than 1,000 customers in the Greater China region. Saifu provides customers with formulation expertise and product innovation services through a dedicated technology application center with two laboratories.

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China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, reported an increased gas output during the first half of this year, a number of oil and gas discoveries and breakthroughs and intensified efforts in high quality exploration, said Chinadaily.

The company's production of oil and gas in the first half of 2023 reached 250 million barrels of oil equivalent, up 3.3 percent year-on-year, with natural gas production of 660.9 billion cubic feet, up 7.6 percent year-on-year, it said in a report released on Sunday.

The company has strengthened integrated operation of natural gas production, supply, storage and sales and improved the profitability of the whole natural gas business chain.

The company also reported higher refinery output and growth in fuel sales during the first six months. Refinery throughput reached 127 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 4.8 percent, while total sales volume of refined oil products reached 117 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 18.5 percent. Ethylene production was 6.875 million tons, up by 0.4 percent year-on-year.

Interim net profit for the first half of the year was 35.11 billion yuan ($4.82 billion), on lower crude prices despite higher refinery output and growth in fuel sales. Turnover and other operating revenues in the first half of 2023 were 1.59 trillion yuan, down 1.1 percent from the year prior.

We remind, Sinopec reported a 10.5% year-on-year increase in first-half 2022 net profit on the back of strong crude, even as its chemical earnings shrunk 94% as demand collapsed amid COVID-19 curbs. Strong crude and COVID-19 outbreaks dampened domestic demand for oil products in April-June 2022, with chemical operations have had to grapple with high cost, high inventory, low utilisation rates and poor margin. Ethylene consumption in the first half barely grew, logging a 0.1% year-on-year increase, while output grew 5.9% to 6.85m tonnes. Sinopec is targeting to produce 7.2m tonnes of ethylene in the second half, which will bring the full-year production to 14.05m tonnes, up 4.9% from 2021.

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