S-Oil shuts down aromatics unit at Onsan after fire

A large fire broke out at the S-Oil Onsan plant and was extinguished in about five hours, said Kedglobal.

Fortunately, there were no casualties, but residents are complaining of anxiety over the repeated fires at the Ulsan Chemical Industrial Complex.

According to the Ulsan Fire Department on the 28th, a fire broke out at 4:47 a.m. at the S-Oil Onsan plant in Ulju-gun, Ulsan, and was completely extinguished at 9:34 a.m., five hours later. The fire is believed to have occurred in a heating device (heater) used in the process of making the synthetic fiber raw material "xylene." Company’s No. 2 unit can produce 1.05 MMt/y of p-xylene and 300,000 metric tons per year of benzene.

The process controlled the system in the control room, so there were few field workers, so there were no casualties. However, S-Oil expected some disruptions to xylene production. On this day, the fire soared with an explosion, and a large amount of smoke spread in the form of a long band, leading to a series of related reports.

Ulsan residents are complaining of anxiety over repeated fires at the petrochemical complex. In February, a fire broke out due to damage to pipes at the S-Oil plant, which caught fire that day, and was extinguished in three hours. In May, a salt manufacturer in the industrial complex, Hanju, caught fire at the Korea Zinc plant in June and extinguished it in about 22 minutes and 50 minutes, respectively.

In December last year, a worker was injured when a fire broke out while repairing a pipe passing underneath a factory site.

Jeon (28), a resident of Duwang-dong, Nam-gu, Ulsan, said, "I can see smoke coming from the industrial complex and it smells bad. As I live in contact with chemicals, I am worried that harmful substances will penetrate into residential areas if a fire or accident occurs."

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ExxonMobil has signed its fourth carbon capture and storage (CCS) agreement with CF Industries. ExxonMobil will transport and permanently store up to 500,000 tpy of captured CO2 from CF Industries’ complex in Yazoo City, Mississippi, which makes nitrogen products for agricultural fertilizer and other essential products.

The project will enable CF Industries to reduce the site’s CO2 emissions by up to about 50 percent. Startup is planned for 2028.

With this agreement, the total CO2 we’ve agreed to store for customers is up to 5.5 MMtpy. That’s equivalent to replacing about 2 MM gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles*, which is more than the total EVs sold in the United States in 2023. No other company has announced CCS commitments of this magnitude.

“We’re serious about expanding carbon capture – a safe, proven solution for hard-to-decarbonize industries,” said Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions. “Our agreement with CF Industries is the latest example of how we can help industrial customers make significant progress, quickly and economically.”

It’s our second CCS project with Illinois-based CF Industries, and our first in Mississippi. As former governor Haley Barbour said in a recent op-ed, carbon capture can help support the state’s economic growth, in addition to reducing emissions.

ExxonMobil Chemical has announced plans to close its ethylene and propylene production facility in the Normandy region of France in 2024, pending approval from the local government. The company plans to shut down the steam cracker, which was launched in 1967. The plant’s production capacity is estimated at 425,000 tons of ethylene and 290,000 tons of propylene per year.

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A federal appeals court rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision in 2022 to deny small oil refineries temporary waivers from the nation’s biofuels blending program, and sent the matter back to the agency for review, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is a win for the refining industry, which has long opposed federal requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard that they add biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into the nation’s fuel.

The court’s opinion, and details of the decision, were sealed. The RFS was designed to help farmers and to reduce U.S. petroleum imports, but oil refiners – particularly smaller independent ones – say the program imposes costs that put their businesses at risk. The EPA can award exemptions to small refiners if they prove the obligations cause them undue harm.

In 2022, the agency rejected a slew of such requests, triggering the legal battle that was spearheaded by refiner Sinclair Wyoming Refining Company and joined by others.

The biofuel industry, including producers of corn-based ethanol, have long fought the small refinery waiver program, arguing that it has been overused in a way that helps the oil industry but hurts American farmers.

In a separate but related case last year, a U.S. appeals court struck down the EPA's 2023 blanket denials of small refinery exemptions.
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Indian imports of butyl acrylate fell 52.8% year over year and were down 45.7% on the month at 8,692 metric tons in May, according to the latest customs data.

Taiwan was once again the top supplier in May with volumes of 3,057 metric tons, which was less than half of the volume it supplied in April, the data showed. Saudi Arabia and Malaysia were the next largest suppliers, with volumes of 2,013 metric tons and 1,661 metric tons, respectively.

While imports from Saudi Arabia were nearly 31% lower year over year, those from Malaysia fell over 32% from the same period last year, according to the data.

China, which had consistently been the largest supplier of butyl acrylate to India, remained at the fourth position in the reporting month.

China’s exports to India fell over 82% on the year to 1,841 metric tons in May, the data showed. On a month-over-month basis, shipments nearly halved.

Market sources said to S&P Global Commodity Insights that government-mandated quality control requirements by the Bureau of Indian Standards dented demand for shipments of Chinese origin.

Meanwhile, exports of butyl acrylate from India also registered a decline of over 61% year over year to 52.56 metric tons in May, customs data showed. Last month, shipments from India stood at nearly 1,252 metric tons.

In May, the UAE became the top destination for the chemical segment, importing 43 metric tons, according to the data. Bangladesh was the second-largest importer with 9.2 metric ton of butyl acrylate shipments, which were over 56% lower on the year.

India has reduced import duties on methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) to 5.0%. At the same time, the customs duty on flexible polyvinyl chloride (PVC) films will be increased from the current 10% to 25%. It is also planned to increase the import duty on ammonium nitrate from 7.5% to 10%.

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Mexico is seeking to import more motor fuel for next year than it had previously planned, to compensate for delays in the startup of its new Olmeca refinery, half a dozen traders said, marking an about-turn by state energy company Pemex, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The purchases for next year signal that the refinery would not be ready any time soon, a damper on the legacy of outgoing President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who commissioned it after he was elected in 2018 to wean the country off expensive imports.

Pemex, the most indebted among peers worldwide, is a major crude producer but relies heavily on gasoline and diesel imports because its six ageing refineries struggle to process its heavy Maya crude, producing instead record amounts of fuel oil.

Earlier this year, Pemex had indicated to suppliers that it planned to significantly cut imports of both fuels because the 340,000-barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery would finally work at capacity, the market sources said.

Reuters, however, revealed last month that the refinery is unlikely to produce any commercially viable fuels from crude before the end of the year as engineers were still working on key parts more than two years after it was inaugurated.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency was also skeptical. In its June report, it wrote that the refinery was unlikely to come online any sooner than the fourth quarter of next year.

Reuters was unable to determine by how much Pemex had earlier planned to cut imports for next year. Pemex did not respond to a request for comment.

However, Mexico is now back in the market for deals that would guarantee fuel supplies through the rest of this year and next, and has made inquiries in the U.S. and across Asia, the traders said.

Pemex traders are seeking similar volumes to those they previously imported, a trader at a large commodity house said. That was confirmed by another U.S.-based trader working for a large refiner in Latin America.

They have also made inquiries with Chinese refiners in the past two weeks, but no deals have been made yet, two Asian traders said.

New deals for 2025 supplies would contradict what Pemex CEO Octavio Romero said earlier this month - that Mexico would drastically lower imports of fuels in the coming months.

The Olmeca refinery would start up in next days, he said then. New coking units in the Tula and Salina Cruz refineries will also boost output to above national demand and Pemex would have a surplus, he added.

In the first five months of the year, Pemex produced 306,547 bpd of gasoline and 181,565 bpd of diesel in its six domestic refineries, official data showed. It imported 358,545 bpd of gasoline and 128,215 bpd of diesel.

We remind, Japan's Yokohama Rubber will build a passenger tire plant in Mexico to improve its ability to serve the North American market. The new facility, with a capacity of 5 million tires per year, will be built in Saltillo, Coahuila, with an investment of approximately USD380 million.

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