ROUNDUP

19 December 2005 00:01  [Source: ACN]

celanese planning nanjing VAM plant

Celanese plans to build a 300 000 tonne/year world-scale vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) plant at the company’s Nanjing, China complex. The plant is expected to be operational in late 2007 or early 2008, but the company refused to disclose the cost.

The VAM plant will receive acetic acid from Celanese’s 600 000 tonne/year acetic acid plant in Nanjing, which will begin commercial sales in early 2007. The company also announced that in 2006 it will begin implementation of its next generation of VAM technology called VAntage Plus.

Brazilians investing in chemicals

Petrobras will invest Real 300m (Euro112.5m/US$136.4m) in petrochemicals in 2006 with plans to begin construction on a petrochemicals complex in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The location of the complex will be announced in the coming weeks.

Petrobras has also earmarked part of the capital to begin construction of a fertiliser plant in Brazil’s center-west. Additionally, the company plans to begin construction on Petroquimica Paulinia, a polypropylene joint venture with Braskem.

The company has not ruled out other investments for next year, including increasing its share in polyethylene producer Rio Polimeros.

dow chemical pulls out of sap deal

Dow Chemical Company has discontinued its participation in a feasibility study for an acrylic acid/superabsorbent polymers (SAP) project in Brazil with Petrobras and Elekeiroz.

A Dow spokesman said that the proposed deal structure and perspective economics were not what it wanted.

The US$360m project would have come onstream in 2009 with a 140 000 tonne/year acrylic acid plant, a 50 000 tonne/year SAP facility and a 50 000 tonne/year acrylates unit. The complex was planned to be adjacent to Petrobras’ Gabriel Passos refinery in Minas Gerais, which would supply the propylene feedstock.

gail considers new indian gas lines

GAIL (India) is starting a feasibility report on the transport of 33.5m m3/day of natural gas via a pipeline from Myanmar and the Northeast Indian States of Tripura and Assam to Gaya, Bihar state. The pipeline would then be linked to another proposed pipeline connecting Jagdishpur, Uttar Pradesh state, to Haldia, West Bengal state.

As Jagdishpur already gets gas from the existing trunk pipeline HVJ - which carries imported re-gasified gas and domestic gas from Harzira, Gujarat state, through the central, western and northern States - the Myanmar-India pipeline would create a national grid of pipes. This would improve the supply and availability of feedstock to petrochemical and fertiliser plants.

The last date for the submission of bids to prepare plans for the project is 28 December.

repsol buys into argentine biodiesel

Repsol-YPF will invest Euro30m (US$36m) in building a 100 000 tonne/year biodiesel plant in Argentina, but it has yet to decide the location.

A spokesman dismissed reports that the facility would be in Ensenada, a port town in Eastern Argentina where Repsol has just inaugurated a biofuels research laboratory.

Construction will begin sometime next year and the plant should come onstream in late 2007.

Al-Jubail to get new PDH facility

South Korea’s Daelim Industrial Corp has won a US$660m contract, together with Italy’s Tecnimont, to build a propane dehydrogenation (PDH) unit in Al-Jubail, Saudi Arabia, for Sahara Petrochemical and polyolefins major Basell.

Daelim will build the 450 000 tonne/year PDH unit, while Tecnimont will construct a 450 000 polypropylene plant. Construction work will start in January 2006, and the project is due for completion in September 2008.

guangdong complex edges forward

Kuwait and China have taken a step towards jointly building a refinery and an integrated petrochemical complex in China’s Guangdong province.

The project is between Chinese refiner PetroChina and Kuwait Petroleum Corp’s subsidiaries Petrochemical Industries Company (PIC) and Kuwait Petroleum International. The total investment could amount to US$5bn.

Kuwait’s energy minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahed Al-Sabah was quoted as saying both parties had signed a memorandum of understanding on the project. A feasibility study has been started, and the refinery is expected to have a capacity of up to 400 000 bbl/day. A start-up date was not mentioned, but reports said the project could come onstream in 2010.

exxonmobil grants singapore deal

ExxonMobil Chemical has awarded a contract to engineering firm Foster Wheeler-Parsons for work associated with the study of a second steam-cracker on the same site as its 800 000 tonne/year cracker complex on Jurong Island, Singapore. The company said it has also appointed Georges Grosliere as the project executive.

The project scope includes a world-scale steam cracker and associated derivative units, including polyethylene, polypropylene and speciality elastomers plants, an aromatics extraction unit and an oxo alcohol expansion.

Yanbu EPC work goes to technip

Sabic has signed an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract with Italy’s Technip for its ethylene and propylene plant at the Yansab complex in Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. The value of the contract was not disclosed.

Sabic has also signed a binding contract with Japan’s Toyo Engineering Corporation for the EPC of a planned ethylene glycol plant at the same site.

Sabic affiliate Yansab is planning to build plants with an annual capacity exceeding 4m tonne of petrochemical products.

uzbekistan is fertile ground for NPC

National Petrochemical Co (NPC) is looking at investments in Uzbekistan’s fertiliser sector to enhance its global stature. Details were not disclosed, but a company source said that NPC plans to increase its urea capacity from 2.4m tonne/year in 2005 to 7.2m tonne/year in 2010.

If the projects get off the ground as scheduled, it would put Iran among the top-10 urea-producing countries globally by the end of the decade.

In May, NPC signed a memorandum of understanding with India for a joint venture urea and ammonia complex called Lavan Chemical Co in Assaluyeh, Iran. NPC, Arak Petrochemical and Melli Bank Investment, hold a combined 45% share and India’s Sab Industries has 55%.

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