Belarus to hike tariff to transit oil 11% as of February 1

Belarus' Anti-monopoly Regulation and Trade Ministry has set new tariffs to transit oil across the country's territory, according to the document published on the national legal internet portal, as per Interfax.

The document indicates that the tariff for oil transportation services via the Gomeltransneft Druzhba main pipelines will be 698.48 Russian rubles per tonne in the direction of Unecha, Vysokoye- Adamowo Zastawa oil delivery point, and the tariff will be 239.52 Russian rubles per tonne in the directions of Unecha, Vysokoye-Brody and Unecha, Vysokoye-border between Belarus and Ukraine, respectively.

Consequently, the price to pump oil through Belarus will increase 11% compared to the current tariffs. The document enters into force on February 1, 2025.

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Russia's FESCO planning to increase container transportation with Vietnam

FESCO Transportation Group, the flagship of which is the Far Eastern Shipping Company (FESCO) , is planning to develop maritime container transportation between Russia and Vietnamese ports, the group's president Pyotr Ivanov told journalists, as per Interfax.

"The container transportation market is actively developing today. We transported 25,700 TEU twenty-foot equivalent units last year. Therefore, we essentially grew several times over in three years," he said.

In December last year, FESCO opened a subsidiary enterprise in Vietnam to develop maritime and intermodal container transportation in Southeast Asian countries. DBF Logistics Vietnam will ensure the smooth operation and development of the group's services in Vietnam, including the regular FESCO Vietnam Direct Line which connects Vladivostok with the ports of Haiphong and Ho Chi Minh City, as well as the direct FESCO Intra Asia Service between Ho Chi Minh City and Port Klang in Malaysia.

FESCO, which is under the Rosatom state corporation's control, owns assets in the port, railway and integrated logistics business. FESCO owns PJSC Commercial Port of Vladivostok , the Fesco Integrated Transport intermodal operator, the Dalreftrans refrigerated container operator, as well as the Transgarant and Fesco Trans companies.

The group manages terminal complexes in Novosibirsk, Khabarovsk, Tomsk, and Vladivostok. FESCO manages a container fleet of more than 200,000 twenty-foot equivalent units and nearly 15,000 container flatcars. The maritime fleet comprises more than 30 vessels which operate primarily on the company's own shipping lines. A controlling stake of 92.5% of FESCO was transferred to the Rosatom state corporation by presidential decree in November 2023.

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Russian oil products trapped at sea by US sanctions

Nearly 500,000 metric tons of Russian oil products are trapped on tankers hit by U.S. sanctions, LSEG data showed on Wednesday, as per Bloomberg.

On Jan. 10, new Russia-related sanctions targeted more than 180 vessels and insurance companies, adding to the impact of similar restrictions imposed by United Kingdom and Europe Union.

The vessels under the latest U.S. sanctions include nine tankers that loaded oil products at Russian Baltic and Black Sea ports in December and January.

Four of them - Cup, Aquatica, Turaco and Onyx - are carrying in total around 280,000 tons of fuel oil, destined for India, Turkey and Singapore, LSEG data shows.

Another of the tankers - Ariadne - was loaded in December with about 35,000 tons of naphtha in the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga. It is drifting near Egyptian port of Port Said, according to shipping data.

Four other vessels from the sanctions list are carrying in total around 160,000 tons of ultra-low sulphur diesel and gasoil of Russian origin.

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Mitsubishi Chemical abandons plan for new MMA facility at Geismar

Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. (MCC) said it is terminating plans to build a new methyl methacrylate (MMA) plant in Geismar, La., said the company.

The project, first announced in 2020, was to involve construction of a 350,000-t/y MMA facility, based on the group's ethylene process technology, as well as integrat-ed production units for key raw materials, such as car-bon monoxide and methanol.

In 2022, the company decided to defer a final in-vestment decision on the project by six to 18 months, citing current market volatilities, after concluding the front-end engineering design phase.

The decision to cancel the project was due in part to the prospect of meeting immediate demand with exist-ing MMA manufacturing facilities in Tennessee and elsewhere, and the failure in negotiations with custom-ers to obtain long-term commitments.

The group will continue to optimize its global pro-duction system by establishing new business locations and consolidating existing ones to boost the competi-tiveness of its MMA business, and will pursue such growth strategies as focusing on high value-added ap-plications and developing new applications in accord-ance with the ?New Medium-Term Management Plan 2029? announced on November 13, 2024.

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Lotte suspends naphtha cracker to mitigate consecutive losses

Lotte Chemical Titan, after recording losses for nine consecutive quarters, has shut down operations of a naphtha cracker (NC1) plant at Pasir Gudang, Johor, Malaysia, according to the company.

NC1 has a production capacity of 430,000 t/y of in-termediate petrochemicals, including ethylene and propylene.

Parent company Lotte Chemical recently suspended production lines for ethylene glycol and its derivatives at Plant 2 within the Yeosu National Industrial Complex in South Joelle Province, South Korea, citing continuing losses.

Earlier last year, Lotte Chemical halted polyethylene terephthalate production lines at the Yeosu complex.

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