Germany’s BASF starts building $10-bln petrochemical project in China

German chemical giant BASF has begun construction of its $10-billion integrated petrochemicals project in China’s southern province of Guangdong, the company said in a statement on Saturday.

The project-based in the city of Zhanjiang will be China’s first wholly foreign-owned chemicals complex, for which a framework agreement was signed in January.

It will primarily produce engineering plastics and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), and some petrochemical products widely used in automotive, electronics and new energy vehicles industries.

The project’s first phase is expected to be launched in 2022, with a production capacity of 60,000 tonnes per year (tpy), taking BASF’s total capacity of engineering plastics and TPU to 290,000 tpy in the Asia-Pacific region.

Source: http://bit.ly/37wPuZ4

Worley Partnerships With Nouryon To Explore in Chemical Market

This is good news for chemical market, Worley entered into a framework agreement with Nouryon, a global company in the specialty and industrial chemicals market.

As part of the agreement, 50 employees of Nouryon Projects & Engineering will continue their careers and their EPCm activities under the banner of Worley.

Nouryon has guaranteed a significant amount of work for the duration of 5,5 years, including programs and maintenance on Nouryon’s European sites, as well as new discrete projects. The first new projects under the Master Service Agreement (MSA) are expected to start in December in the Netherlands and Sweden.

This new partnership is an addition to a series of long-term customer relationships in the chemical market in Europe, including a Global Engineering Alliance with BASF, a strategic partnership with SABIC and long-term relationship with Dow Chemicals and Borealis. It also brings additional knowledge and opportunities for green hydrogen production.
The Worley relationship with Nouryon strengthens position in the chemicals market, consistent with their strategy. The transfer of the Nouryon team enhances Worley’s deep knowledge and skills of the chemicals market.

As we focus on Worley, It delivers projects, provides expertise in engineering, procurement and construction and offers a wide range of consulting and advisory services. It covers the full life-cycle, from creating new assets to sustaining and enhancing operating assets, in the hydrocarbons, mining, mineral, metals, chemicals, power and infrastructure sectors. Our resources and energy are focused on responding to and meeting the needs of customers over the long term and thereby creating value for shareholders.

Source: https://www.worleyparsons.com/

Adnoc awards Dh1.8bn EPC contract to upgrade Bab onshore field

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company(ADNOC) awarded a Dh1.8 billion contract to upgrade capacity at its giant onshore Bab field, which produces the emirate’s flagship Murban crude.

A subsidiary, Adnoc Onshore, granted 39-month engineering, procurement, and construction contract to Greek company Archirodon Construction Overseas to maintain long-term crude production capacity at the field at 485,000 barrels per day.

The Bab field already plays an important role in supporting Adnoc’s production capacity mandates and this upgrade complements Adnoc’s upstream growth plans,” said Adnoc Onshore chief executive, Yaser Al Mazrouei.

The UAE accounts for 4 per cent of global crude production, much of it sourced from fields owned and operated by Adnoc in Abu Dhabi. The national oil company is targeting increasing production capacity to 4 million barrels per day by 2020, from 3 million bpd at present. By 2030, the company sees output capacity hitting 5 million bpd. The UAE’s total output for September was 3.08 million bpd, according to secondary sources cited by Opec.

Adnoc is targeting raising production capacity on the Bab field to 450,000 bpd by 2020 from 420,000 bpd presently. Around Dh1.35bn is expected to flow back into the UAE as a result of the capacity addition, Adnoc said.

Source: https://www.adnoc.ae/

Rosneft Prepares to Lead Massive $157 Billion Arctic Oil Project

Rosneft is preparing to lead an Arctic oil field development project that will cost an estimated $157 billion (10 trillion rubles).

Reuters quoted Russia’s Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin as announcing the price tag of the Vostok Oil project to media last week, adding that the Kremlin had already agreed on a tax relief package that would help with the Artic oil and gas push.

The Vostok Oil project will include already producing fields as well as untapped ones, and Rosneft will develop them along with partner Independent Petroleum Company. The tax relief for this project alone could reach some $940 million (60 billion rubles) annually, the chief of the tax department of Russia’s Finance Ministry said.

The tax relief package for the energy industry has been the subject of heated debate in political circles because at the same time that the Kremlin is lending its generous support for oil and gas, it is hiking other taxes, on citizens, and extending the retirement age as part of a delayed and highly unpopular retirement system reform.
Alexei Sazanov, the head of the tax department at Russia’s finance ministry, told reporters at the same event on Friday that tax benefits for Vostok Oil could cost up to 60 billion roubles per year. The comments by Sorokin and Sazanov were embargoed until early on Monday.

Russia’s budget surplus, projected at 1.7% of gross domestic product this year, is expected to shrink to 0.2% in 2022, partly due to the various supports offered to the energy sector, a cornerstone of budget revenue.

Source: https://www.rosneft.com/

Petrofac secures US$120 million in Engineering & Production Services (EPS) awards

Petrofac announces awards and contract extensions with a combined value of more than US$120 million, delivering against the Group’s strategy to position Engineering & Production Services (“EPS”) for growth by diversifying into new markets and geographies.

The awards and contract extensions consist of the following:

  • EPS has secured its first small-scale Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) contract in Malaysia. In consortium with partner Serba Dinamik, EPS has been awarded a contract by Asean Bintulu Fertiliser (ABF) Sdn Bhd, one of Malaysia’s largest fertiliser plants, for its Third Boiler Project. The ABF plant located in the central region of Sarawak, which started commercial production in 1985, is a subsidiary of PETRONAS Chemicals Group Berhad. The work scope for the 30-month project includes basic and detailed engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of an additional package boiler (165 tonnes per hour) to improve overall plant reliability and availability and meet total steam demands of 510 tph.
  • EPS has also secured a new three-year Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning (EPCC) Framework Agreement (FA) with a North Sea operator. Future projects undertaken through the FA will be supported by Petrofac’s Aberdeen office, where the company is actively growing its engineering team and investing in its brownfield management system in support of its digitalisation strategy.
  • The new brownfield projects awards coincide with key North Sea contract extensions for EPS, including a two-year renewal of an existing seven-asset Operations and Maintenance contract, and the extension of EPS’ existing Engineering Services contract with Chevron North Sea to June 2020.

Source: www.petrofac.com

Iraq Plans to Construct 5 New Refineries with 790000 bpd Capacity

The Iraqi Ministry of Oil has announced its plan to choose a number of specialized international investment companies to build five new refineries with 790,000 bpd Capacity around the country.

Hamid al-Zobaie, the ministry’s official, said in a press statement there is a plan to build five refineries across the country through investment and various refining cards, pointing out that the ministry is currently looking for fitted companies to build these refineries.

Zobaie added that qualification and selection processes depend on studying technical and financial capabilities of the companies, especially that the construction of the refinery requires up to USD3 billion. Applying companies must also commit to the deadlines and ensure completion of construction within the schedule.
They also clarify that they need to know the capabilities of companies which will bid for such projects since one refinery requires a funding coverage of up to $3 billion. They also want to make sure these companies will comply with the schedule for the project completion as well as their experience in such projects.

Theoretically, there is no reason why Iraq cannot become one of the leading producers of petrochemicals in the world, given its tremendous reserves of oil and gas. Finally, with a relatively low oil price complex and its crude exports falling in October, Iraq appears to be making some advances on moving its long-stalled push into the petchems sector forward.

Source: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Can-Iraq-Become-A-World-Class-Petrochemicals-Player.html

Sinopec to launch $5.7 billion South China refinery in second quarter 2020

China’s Sinopec Corp is set to launch a new $5.7 billion refining and petrochemical complex in the south of the country in second-quarter 2020 using crude oil from Kuwait as a key feedstock, industry officials with knowledge of the matter said.

The project being developed by Asia’s top refiner, a 200,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) plant in Zhanjiang, a coastal city in Guangdong province, will become the third greenfield refinery-petrochemical complex to be built in China within a space of two years.

Zhanjiang is Sinopec’s first major capacity addition since it launched a similar-sized Qingdao refinery on the east coast in 2009.

But the 40 billion yuan ($5.69 billion) complex comes on the heels of two privately invested mega-refineries – Hengli Petrochemical and Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp – that have piled fresh capacity into an already oversupplied domestic fuel market, where transportation fuel demand has slowed while China’s fuel exports have soared.

Sinopec is seeking to finalise a crude oil supply deal with Kuwait Petroleum Company (KPC) that will help boost Kuwait’s oil sales to China to a record of nearly 600,000 bpd next year, the sources said. They declined to be identified because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

Saipem Considering Merger Deal With Rival Subsea 7

Saipem SpA is considering a combination with rival Subsea 7 SA in what could rank as one of the European oil services industry’s biggest-ever deals, people with knowledge of the matter said. Such a merger would create the fourth-largest oilfield service company, after Schlumberger, Halliburton and Baker Hughes.

The Italian company is pursuing a potential transaction with Norway-listed Subsea 7 as it seeks to bulk up and weather an industry downturn, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Subsea 7, which has a market value of about $3.3 billion, rose as much as 8.4% in Oslo trading Friday for the biggest advance in more than two years. Saipem jumped as much as 5.3%. Both companies later pared their gains. Saipem isn’t the only company from the Italian energy industry seeking growth abroad. This year, Eni and OMV AG acquired a $5.8 billion stake in Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.’s refining unit. Since 2000, Eni has racked up 10 acquisitions each worth at least $1 billion.

By combining with Saipem, Subsea 7 would also get exposure to onshore engineering and construction, where Saipem has a solid track record in the petrochemical and liquefied natural gas industries, thus reducing dependence on upstream oil and gas activities. Furthermore, Saipem has a legacy name in the Middle East and many contracts in this booming market. With this move, the merged entity could fight McDermott for the leading role in the oilfield services segment in the region.

Source: https://www.saipem.com/

MRPL Plans To Spend Rs 31,000 Crore For Expanding Refinery Capacity To 18 MTPA

Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (MRPL), the downstream subsidiary of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), plans to invest Rs 31,073 crore to undertake expansion of its flagship 16 Million Tonne Per Annum (MTPA) refinery to 18 MTPA and focus on integration of production streams for petrochemicals like ethylene, propylene and butane, the company said in an application to the environment ministry.

According to company statements, a hybrid configuration with limited increase in crude capacity and petchem products which would meet the boundary conditions of capex requirement, land availability and logistical constraints was envisaged. An in-house hybrid study has been conducted for arriving at the best possible configuration for Petchem addition and capacity expansion project (PACE) by means of low capex, revamps and unit augmentations with fuels conforming to BS VI specifications, for MS and HSD along with petchem products.
The company said the project is currently facing challenges including processing of heavier and sulfur-rich crude, strict environmental regulations, enhanced product specifications for sulfur and aromatics, evolving regional supply and demand dynamics for diesel versus petrol, volatile refining margins, evacuation challenges around petcoke and IMO 2020 specifications, which have necessitated increased capacity and focus on petrochemicals.

MRPL also plans to undertake the capacity expansion of its second crude oil distillation unit (CDU) to 9.7 MTPA from 7.2 MTPA currently, conversion of Visbreaker (VBU) into a 0.7 MTPA CDU for swing operations for processing high sulfur or heavy crude directly and utilization of CDU-I and CDU-III at present capacities. The idea is to utilize maximum crude processing capacity available in primary units.
The company has already started petrochemical production by adding a polypropylene unit and the current refinery complex is integrated to an aromatic complex designed to produce 900,000 Tonne Per Annum (TPA) of paraxylene.

As we focus on MRPL, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited is a schedule ‘A’ Miniratna, Central Public Sector Enterprise (CPSE) under the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas. MRPL is located in beautiful hilly terrain, north of Mangaluru city, in Dakshina Kannada District of Karnataka State (India). The 15 Million Metric Tonne Refinery has got a versatile design with complex secondary processing units and high flexibility to process Crudes of various API, delivering a variety of quality products.

Source: https://mrpl.co.in/

McDermott Secures Two Major Tech and Engineering Contracts in Russia

McDermott International, Inc. announced it has been awarded a technology contract from Baltic Chemical Company (BCC) and an Extended Basic Engineering (EBE) contract from China National Chemical Engineering No. 7 Construction Company Limited (CC7). The ethane cracking project is owned by Baltic Chemical Complex LLC, a subsidiary of RusGazDobycha.

The project is the largest ethylene integration project in the world. It sits near Russia’s shores at the Gulf of Finland, and the gas processing plant will be comprised of two ethylene cracking facilities, each with an annual capacity of 1.4 million tons. Work on the project will begin immediately and the contract award will be a part of McDermott’s 4Q 2019 backlog.

McDermott’s Lummus Technology will provide the Process Design Package Engineering and the license for its olefin production and recovery technology.
Lummus Technology’s proprietary ethylene steam cracking process is the most widely applied process for the production of polymer-grade ethylene, representing approximately 40 percent of the world’s capacity.
McDermott is excited to be selected for two world-scale ethylene plants by BCC and bring our reliable, high-yield and energy-efficient steam cracking technology to a project that has so much visibility in the petrochemicals industry.
The extended basic engineering work will be executed from McDermott’s downstream Centers of Excellence in The Hague and Brno, Czech Republic.

Source: https://www.mcdermott.com/