ChemAnalyst

The unrest in Europe does not seem to mellow down any time soon, judging from the current geopolitical scenario of Eastern Europe. Although ceasefire had been declared with effect from 10 A.M Moscow time, Monday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky accuses Russian troops of night-time shelling of Ukrainian cities. Crude Oil spiralled to USD 130/b as of Monday the 7 th of March with Brent prices soaring as high as USD 139/b. As the US and EU allies contemplate a ban on Russian crude, ChemAnalyst predicts Oil price to continue its surge for the rest of the quarter and perhaps longer. India’s energy security could be gravely impacted if the current trend in the crude and natural gas markets continue for long. Natural gas prices too have breached the USD 5/MMBtu mark on Monday. CLSA predicts Indian LNG prices to be constantly above the USD 30/MMBtu mark throughout 2022 which could mean further pressure on India’s energy basket. The government will have to continue its policy of ratio...

USA-based multinational, refiner and energy producer, Phillips 66, has planned to commence repair works at its storm-hit two units at Alliance, Louisiana refinery , that had remained shut after the landfall made by Ida in late August. The repair activity, set to begin in January 2022, will be covering a 250,000-bpd day crude distillation unit, a 120,000-bpd fluidic catalytic cracking unit for gasoline production, a 33,000-bpd reformer, and a 70,000-bpd diesel hydrotreater. In addition, the damaged electrical system will also be put under repair to enable the power supply to all the equipment. The Alliance refinery is an attractive midstream asset that receives pipeline transported domestic crude oil from the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. light oil is supplied to it by marine transport. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port enables the transport of foreign crude oil through a pipeline to the Alliance refinery. The company has opened doors to the sale of the refinery post-repair or might consider ...

China’s Ministry of Commerce, in the last week, issued an order stating its approval to apportion PetroChina, Sinopec, and CNOOC with an additional quota on 1 million metric tonnes of domestically produced bunker crude export for bonded bunkering at China ports this year. Moreover, the ministry has also given approval to the state-owned refinery Sinopec to use its allocated 230,000 metric tonnes of bunker fuel export quota for exporting gasoil, gasoline, and jet fuel in 2021. China produced 9.2 million metric tonnes of bunker fuel in the January-August period. The additional quota on bunker crude makes the total export volume of bunker fuel quota reach 11.77 million metric tonnes. On the other hand, the volume of gasoil, gasoline and jet fuel falling under the export quota after the transfer of Sinopec’s quota reached 27.23 million metric tonnes in 2021, registering a considerable increase from 33.70 million metric tonnes of quota volume in the January-September period. Bunker fuel o...

The USA’s crude oil giant Royal Dutch Shell is planning to resume its Ida hurricane struck Norco, Louisiana facility accountable for generating 230,611 barrels per day of crude oil, by the end of this week. The units that will be resurrected this week include a DU-5 crude distillation unit of 240,000 barrels per day capacity, a 112,000 barrels per day capacity of gasoline-producing residual catalytic cracking unit, a 40,000 barrels per day capacity of diesel-producing hydrocracker, a coker unit with 25,000 barrels per day capacity, and a reformer of 40,000 barrels per day capacit The Norco refinery had been shut down on August 28, a day before the hurricane thrashed Norco city, inflicting damages to Shell’s refinery. After conducting repair works at the damaged facilities, the company is restarting the units housed in the refinery in phases. It has already got done with the starting of two sulphur recovery units and a diesel hydrotreater having 55,000 barrels per day capacity. Crude...

The world’s leading petrochemical major and the USA’s largest crude oil producer, Shell, is expecting to restart its Mars and Ursa oil and gas facilities in the first half of November which is ahead of the anticipated revival time (in the start of 2022) owing to the ramped-up recovery operations undergoing in the Mars Corridor. The restart of the plant operations is subject to the completion of repair activities, at the West Delta 143 transfer facility, due in the November first half, which will be responsible for transferring oil and gas for processing at offshore terminals from three major fields. Shell was one of the most impacted oil producers from the hurricane Ida that pummelled through the Gulf of Mexico in late August idling millions of crude oil barrels in the region. The Ursa and Mars facilities producing 100,000 and 60,000 barrels of oil per day, respectively, had been ceased down post major disruptions caused by Ida. The sour crude produced from these fields are comparable ...