23 May: Global refining and petrochemical news

Azerbaijan

SOCAR has announced plans to increase its oil refining capacity by 3.1% to 6.7 million tpy this year. The company is looking to increase is production due to increasing domestic demand for fuel. SOCAR has two refineries in the country.

Turcas Petrol has sold its 18.5% equity in Star refinery to Rafineri Holding AS. The rest of the facility belongs to Azerbaijan’s state energy company SOCAR. The share was sold for US$ 59.39 million.

Colombia

Ecopetrol SA has agreed to supply crude to a refinery that is due to come online in 2015. The facility will cost approximately US$ 1.5 billion and will have a processing capacity of 40 000 bpd. The plant will feed the domestic market with fuel and diluent to Ecopetrol.

India

Mangalore Refining and Petrochemicals has cut runs at the facility due to a leak in one of the plant’s hydrocrackers. The leak was reportedly contained within the hour and full processing capacity is expected by the end of today.

ABB India has been named as one of the nine Indian firms in the Forbes World’s 100 most innovative growth companies list. The list was topped by Xero. ABB India is ranked at number 37, and has been given an enterprise value of US$ 2.7 billion.

Oman

Orpic has announced over 250 job opportunities for young people in Oman holding a bachelor’s degree or diploma or other technical qualifications. This is part of the company’s commitment to enhancing the workforce. The announcement is reportedly part of the company’s business expansion plan which includes current projects such as the Sohar Refinery improvement project which is currently under implementation.

Russia

Russian oil refinery runs reportedly fell month on month by 6.1% in April. Processing levels hit 355 496 bpd due to seasonal maintenance throughput the country’s refineries.

Scotland

Due to a technical problem, diesel production at the Grangemouth refinery owned by Ineos was hit. Diesel production was cut by approximately 30% when one of the plant’s production units was completely shutdown.

South Korea

Due to an ongoing lack of crude C4 feedstock, Kumho Petrochemical has announced that it will continue to operate both of its butadiene plants at 50%. The two plants have been operating at 50% since march and have a total processing capacity of 240 000 bpd when running at full capacity.

Samsung Total Petrochemicals Co. Ltd has said that a small quantity of petrochemical product leaked from its newly build paraxylene plant on the 22nd May. However, the company has since reported that a full clean up has been executed. 2.4 kilolitres of paradiethylbenzene leaked from the facility whilst flowing to test pipes.

USA

OriginOil intende to pursue growth through acquisition of one or more service companies with proven ability to treat frac flowback and produced water from the oil and gas industry. The company’s developed the Eclectro Water Separation, a high speed, chemical free process to clean up large quantities of water.

Edited from various sources by Claira Lloyd

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/23052014/23_may_global_refining_petchem_news/