Tag: Incentives

The Philippine government is looking to follow Indonesia’s success in attracting downstream investment by banning the export of nickel ore. The Philippine Congress could ratify a bill banning raw mineral exports as early as June. The ban would come into force five years after approval to give miners time to build downstream processing plants. This development could potentially lead to higher nickel prices in the medium term if there is a delay to building domestic capacity and the Indonesian government becomes serious about restraining ore availability.

Nitrogen+Syngas went to press just a few days before Donald Trump’s swearing-in as the next president of the United States. While it is sometimes difficult to sort the truth from the hyperbole in his public pronouncements, nevertheless, if taken at face value, they would seem to indicate that we may be in for a turbulent four years in commodity markets in particular. While he is an avowed military non-interventionist, on the economic policy side he has emerged as a firm believer in the power of tariffs to alter markets in the favour of the US, and has promised 20% tariffs on all goods entering the US, potentially rising to 25% for Canada and Mexico, and 60% for his particular bugbear, China, sparking a scramble for wholesalers to stock up in the last few weeks of the Biden presidency. Trump previously raised tariffs on Chinese goods entering the US to 20% during his first term, and the Biden administration made no attempt to reverse this, and even added some additional ones, for example 20% on Russian and Moroccan phosphate imports.

High energy storage costs for renewable-based technologies are likely to make European long term carbon prices considerably higher than their present levels.

With a large number of green ammonia projects under development, financing remains the greatest hurdle to getting ventures off the ground.

As more focus extends to a circular economy, there are industry wide discussions on whether future global sulphur demand will be challenged by the energy transition and decarbonisation. Hannes Storch, Collin Bartlett and Marcus Runkel of Metso discuss how the recycling of pyrite tailings could address some of these issues.

A review of the current slate of plans for green and blue ammonia production.

Low emissions hydrogen is expected to play an increasing role in the syngasbased chemicals industry, but cost and technical challenges remain.

Agropolychim has announced that CEO Philippe Rombaut will become chairman of Agropolychim’s board of directors, with a focus on steering the company’s strategic development. His new appointment will make way for Teodor Petsov to assume the role of head of production operations. Petsov has 22 years of production experience and a management background. In his capacity as the new production director, he will be responsible for orchestrating, overseeing, and coordinating all aspects of the company’s production activities.

TarT technology, one of 8 Rivers’ decarbonisation technologies, shows promise as an economical, efficient, sour gas sweetening process with near-zero carbon dioxide emissions, and may be key to unlocking access to the world’s sour gas reserves.

The US Inflation Reduction Act has been a major step in terms of incentivising green syngas production, and has encouraged other governments to look at their own regulatory regimes.