Category: Oceania

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says that it plans to build a $3 billion methanol plant on Brass Island in the Niger Delta to produce up to 10,000 t/d of methanol using from gas supplied by Shell. A final investment decision was made by NNPC, DSV Engineering and the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, a state agency set up to ensure Nigerian involvement in oil and gas projects. Around 70% of funding for the project will come from international lenders, including the China Export-Import Bank, the African Development Bank and international commercial banks, with the rest funded from an equity issue. BP has signed a 10 year offtake deal for the plant’s output with the Brass Fertilizer & Petrochemical Company, the entity set up to operate the plant. Construction of the plant is expected to be completed by 2025.

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.

Storm Uri which blanketed the southern states of the US with snow, and led to widespread power outages in Texas, has had a major impact upon US Gulf Coast and Southern-Midwest refined products supply. Most Gulf Coast refineries were shut down or forced to operate at reduced rates. IHS Markit estimated that more than 5.2 million bbl/d of Gulf Coast capacity and 730,000 bbl/d in PADD 2 was impacted by the winter weather at its height, and close to 20% of lower 48 US natural gas production was shut-in in the first half of February. A drop in crude oil production of between 2.2 and 4 million bbl/d was estimated.

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.

In early October Tesla held a ‘battery day’ event at its headquarters in Fremont, California. Speaking at the event, company founder and CEO Elon Musk outlined his vision for the electric car industry over the coming decades, and spoke particularly to his ambitions for the nickel industry. He had already called for more mining of nickel earlier in the year, and has said that Tesla is developing cathodes that will contain higher nickel and no cobalt. The latter comes after a lawsuit against Tesla and several other high-tech US firms for allegedly supporting human rights violations by buying cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Musk echoed the potential ‘reputational risk’ for the nickel market and called for more sustainable nickel production, dangling the prospect of a “giant contract” with any miners that could produce nickel in an “environmentally sensitive way.” Tesla is reportedly in discussions with Vale and BHP as well as the Indonesian government concerning potential investments in nickel production.

Johnson Matthey (JM) has been selected by China’s Ningxia Baofeng Energy Group as licensor for a third methanol synthesis plant at their coal to olefins complex near Yinchuan in Ningxia province. With a planned capacity of 7,200 t/d (2.4 million t/a), the unit will be the largest single train methanol plant in the world once completed.

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.

Spanish fertilizer producer Fertiberia is teaming up with energy firm Iberdrola to build Europe’s largest plant for generating green hydrogen for industrial use – in this case ammonia production. The 100MW solar plant and accompanying 20 MWh lithium-ion battery system and 20MW electrolytic hydrogen production system will be built at a cost of $174 million, and electrolyse water to produce 720 t/a of hydrogen. When fed into Fertiberia’s existing ammonia plant at Puertollano, 250km south of Madrid, the hydrogen will allow a 10% reduction in natural gas use by the plant, saving the company 39,000 t/a in annual CO 2 emissions. Start-up is planned for 2021. Fertiberia will also use electrolysis-generated oxygen as a raw material for nitric acid, which is used to produce ammonium nitrate at the site.

Sulphur demand in Australia has been boosted by the restart of the nickel leaching plant at Ravensthorpe, and new HPAL projects are under development, but a slew of new phosphate projects are not scheduled to consume more acid domestically.

Air Products and Haldor Topsoe have signed a global alliance agreement. Under the terms of the agreement the two companies will use their combined market network for developing potential projects and the combination of their expertise on large-scale ammonia, methanol and/or dimethyl ether (DME) plants to be developed and built globally. It gives Air Products access to Topsoe’s technology licenses and the supply of engineering design, equipment, high-performance catalysts and technical services for ammonia, methanol and DME plants that are built, owned and operated by Air Products. It also allows for the integration of Topsoe’s technology into many Air Products’ technologies including gasification of various feedstocks, and synthesis gas processes.