Category: Middle East

Copper major Freeport-McMoRan is reportedly on verge of finalising a $2.8 billion deal with China’s Tsingshan to build a copper smelter in Weda Bay, Indonesia. The Indonesian government said that the companies were aiming to conclude negotiations by the end of March. It also said that most of the financing will be borne by Tsingshan, with Freeport possibly only needing to provide funding for 7.5% of the total project cost. The smelter would have a copper concentrate input capacity of 2.4 million t/a.

The United States has imposed duties on Russian and Moroccan phosphate imports.

Johnson Matthey (JM) has secured a multiple licence for China’s Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group’s latest project to develop five of the largest single train methanol plants in the world. Located at Baofeng’s Ordos City complex in Inner Mongolia, the five plants each have a planned capacity 7,200 t/d. Under the agreement Johnson Matthey will be the licensor of all five plants and supplier of associated engineering, technical review, commissioning assistance, and catalyst. The plants will take synthesis gas as a feed and use JM radial steam raising converters in a patented series loop. Within the design, there is potential for 1-2% more feedstock efficiency over the life of the catalyst. Thanks to JM’s methanol loop synthesis technology, the plants will provide enhanced energy savings along with low OPEX, CAPEX and emissions. When complete, the plants will represent JM’s 13th operating license in China for a mega-scale plant (>5,500 t/d) and the fourth JM methanol design licensed by Ningxia Baofeng Energy.

Building on its long experience and leading position within global ammonia production, logistics and trade, Yara says that it aims to capture opportunities in green shipping, agriculture and industrial applications; a market expected to grow by 60% over the next two decades. A major first step includes plans to fully electrify its ammonia plant at Porsgrunn, Norway, with the potential to cut 800,000 t/a of CO 2 , equivalent to the emissions from 300,000 passenger cars.

Construction work has begun on a new hydrocracking complex for the Assiut refinery in Egypt, in the central Nile valley, according to TechnipFMC plc, who won the $1 billion engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for the project. The contract involves construction of new processing units including a vacuum distillation unit, a diesel hydrocracking unit, a delayed coker unit, a distillate hydrotreating unit and a hydrogen production unit which will use TechnipFMC’s proprietary steam reforming technology.

Brimstone STS Ltd. today announced a new partnership with Sulphur Recovery Engineering Inc (SRE). The two companies say that this collaboration will bring together decades of experience and the latest technology in support of the sulphur recovery and gas treating industry worldwide.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) have announced the ‘Next Gen Fertilizer Challenge’, a joint EPA-USDA partnership and competition to advance agricultural sustainability in the United States. The competition includes two challenges that seek proposals for new and existing fertilizer technologies to maintain or improve crop yields while reducing the impacts of fertilizers on the environment.

Recent protests in Belarus have triggered a wave of share price volatility, London’s Financial Times reported on 18th August.

In a few short years Abu Dhabi has grown to become the world’s largest sulphur producer and exporter, and new sour gas projects will lead to additional sulphur recovery capacity, provided they can overcome economic challenges.

Haldor Topsoe and Comprimo® have announced a global strategic alliance to jointly license the TopClaus sulphur removal and recovery technology. TopClaus combines Topsoe’s energy efficient wet sulphuric acid (WSA) process with the industry-standard Claus process, enabling plant operators to handle acid gases and achieve sulphur removal efficiencies of above 99.9%. The Claus part of the unit recovers elemental sulphur from acid gases, and the tail gases from the Claus unit are then treated in the WSA unit, where the remaining sulphur compounds are converted into sulphuric acid.