Tag: United States

The fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran broke down at the start of July, just three weeks after the signing of the June memorandum of understanding, after Iran fired at several vessels who had failed to notify them of their transit of the Strait of Hormuz, and the US retaliated with a missile barrage. While the two month negotiation period it had specified to solve all of the outstanding issues between the two parties had always seemed over-ambitious, market participants had at least expected to have that grace period to arrange for new cargoes and tranship them through the Strait. Now that the ceasefire has ended early, markets are truly entering uncharted waters.

Arianne Phosphate has provided samples of its phosphate concentrate for processing at Travertine’s facility in Boulder, Colorado, US. Pilot scale testing was successfully performed, demonstrating proof of concept on the process and production of a high-quality purified phosphoric acid (PPA). The Travertine process captures and recycles over 95% of the sulphur used in the process of making PPA, providing a virtually closed loop system. The PPA produced using the process met specifications required for both LFP batteries as well as fertilizers. The companies have begun work to advance the PPA demonstration plant in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, working with potential partners as well as end-users of the product.

The signing of a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran on June 17th has provided relief across most markets as both sides agreed to allow ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, at least in terms of trapped vessels from the Gulf being able to exit.

Yara International has reached an agreement to acquire Gulf Coast Ammonia’s (GCA) ammonia production facility in Texas City, Texas from GCA Holdings LLC, for a consideration of $ 1.3 billion. Yara says that the acquisition is part of its strategy to diversify its energy exposure and enhance the competitiveness of its global ammonia production footprint. Yara will own the ammonia plant with an expected nameplate capacity of 1.3 million t/a, with Air Products supplying industrial gases to Yara as part of a long-term supply agreement. Yara will use its midstream ammonia platform to supply both external customers and its own internal sourcing needs.

Cover story! Sergio Saenz, CEO of International Minerals Carlsbad (IMC), and Kelvin Feist, the company’s Commercial Consultant, talk to Fertilizer International ahead of Southwestern Fertilizer Conference.

We speak to Justin Rackleff, CRU’s Americas Lead, Fertilizer Value Chain, about the US market state-of-play ahead of this year's Southwestern Fertilizer Conference.

President Donald Trump has declared an emergency over fertilizer supply and authorised the temporary suspension of certain anti dumping and countervailing duties on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco.

Merichem Technologies has announced successful results from its ECOTREAT® field trial in the Permian Basin, demonstrating that its new hydrogen sulphide (H2S) removal process achieved sustained removal of > 99% of hydrogen sulphide gas without producing solid waste products. The new core technology uses an aqueous phase proprietary catalytic process that converts H2S into thiosulphate. […]

SunGas Renewables Inc. has said that it will cease further development of the Beaver Lake Biofuels project, a proposed wood fibre-to-low carbon methanol facility in Louisiana. The project was to have involved integrating three of SunGas S1000 syngas production systems with downstream technologies to produce approximately 553,000 t/a of low carbon methanol, and geological storage […]

The US International Trade Commission (USITC) has decided to carry out a full, in depth review of US subsidy duties on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco and Russia.