Qatar Builds Its Future Source of picture: The New York Times By John Richardson EXXONMOBIL and Qatar Petroleum have formally ended their agreement to build a $6bn petrochemical complex in Qatar, says a report by the Middle East Economic Digest. This follows the earlier MEED report that discussions to break-up the JV had […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil Delay Qatar Cracker
By John Richardson Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil have delayed the start-up of their 1.6m tonne/year cracker and derivatives project in Qatar, my colleague Anna Jagger reported on ICIS news yesterday – quoting sources familiar with the project. This confirms an earlier media report to this effect – and adds the extra details that start-up of […]
Report: ExxonMobil Qatar Project In Doubt
Up In The Air? Source of picture: www.marcdussault.com.blog By John Richardson QATAR Petroluem and ExxonMobil have started talks to dissolve their partnership for a 1.6m tonne/year cracker project in Qatar, according to an article published earlier this week by the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED). The project, due for start-up in 2015, would have […]
Qatar eyes cracker capacity hike and propane cracking
By Malini Hariharan Ras Laffan Olefins Co (RLOC) is studying an expansion of its new cracker by using propane as a feedstock. At a recent news conference, Mohammed Yousef Al Mulla, general manager of Qatofin, the Qatar Petroleum-Total joint venture downstream of the 1.3m tonnes/year cracker, said that while the cracker was currently running at […]
Chinaplas: Optimism, consolidation, new plant start-ups and more
By Malini Hariharan Chinaplas has just concluded and my colleagues have filed some great reports from Shanghai. Worries about a margin squeeze in the second half of the year persist but polymer producers seem to be increasingly confident about long-term growth prospects. The chairman of the China Plastics Processing Industry Association (CPPIA) talked of the […]
China Polyolefin Buyers Smell Blood……
…..but time to party for some thanks to re-exports to Brazil Source of picture: edgsgonesouth.com By John Richardson It’s a funny old world – or so it seems in poylolefins at the moment as traders re-export resin from China to Latin America and elsewhere. “I phoned up a trader in China the other day […]
The changing world of gas
By Malini Hariharan The blog has recently written about gas availability in the Middle East and upcoming changes to pricing which have big implications for the petrochemicals business. But the global gas market is seeing wider changes and these have been excellently summarised by The Economist. The key development has been the rise of shale […]
Qatar says there will be one more cracker
By Malini Hariharan Qatar has reconfirmed its commitment to build more petrochemical plants including a new worldscale cracker. At a ceremony to mark the start of construction of Qapco’s new ldPE project, the deputy premier and minister of energy and industry said Qatar was launching an aggressive plan to achieve optimal utilization of the country’s […]
Shell would like to build two MEG plants in Qatar
By John Richardson An ethane shortage is slowing Shell Chemicals’ ambitions for building at least one cracker complex in Qatar, Ben van Beurden, executive vice-president of the company said last week. “Ideally, we’d like to build two crackers and two OMEGA process plants on the scale of this one here in Singapore, but at […]
Qatar Petroleum buys into Singapore petchems
Just picked up on the interesting news (not sure how big a deal this is) after attending one of those long interminably-long internal planning meetings. But on this occasion we at least were discussing something useful – not just the new colour for the carpet in reception. So why has Qatar Petroluem bought into Petrochemical […]