Petrochemical industry affected by “Act of God”

From an Article by Kristen Hays & Jacquelyn Melinek, S & P Global, September 1, 2020

Houston — More polymer producers have declared force majeure on polyethylene products in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura’s assault, according to customer letters obtained by S&P Global Platts.

Chevron Phillips Chemical on Sept. 1 and Westlake Polymers on Aug. 31 each declared force majeure on PE, which is used to make the world’s most-used plastics. Both companies have operations that were in the Category 4 storm’s path, knocking out electric power in far southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana.

“Unfortunately, it has become apparent that issues arising in connection with the hurricane and the associated outages have impacted our planned production and delivery of polyethylene products,” CP Chem said in its notice to customers.

Westlake Polymers said the company had begun to assess facility conditions and associated supply and distribution issues, and would have a better damage assessment and potential timing on restarts “in the forthcoming days.”

Those notices were in addition to a separate Westlake Chemical force majeure declaration on Aug. 31 for construction staple polyvinyl chloride and its precursor, vinyl chloride monomer. Sasol also on Aug. 31 declared force majeure for polyethylene.

Entergy, the power provider for much of the affected region, said on Sept. 1 that outages in Texas would be restored in early September. CP Chem’s southeast Texas operations include a cracker and a high density PE plant.

However, Entergy said Lake Charles — where Westlake and Sasol operate significant complexes — as well as other southwest Louisiana areas “face weeks without electrical power.”

Hurricane Laura came ashore near the Texas-Louisiana state line early Aug. 27 packing 150 mph winds, just 7 mph less than a Category 5 storm. Overall, 19% of US ethylene capacity remained offline, down from 29% shortly after the storm.

Here are operations and pricing effects of Hurricane Laura’s aftermath:

FORCE MAJEURE

CP Chem: Force majeure declared Sept. 1 on US polyethylene.

Westlake Polymers: Force majeure declared Aug. 31 on US polyethylene.

Sasol: Force majeure declared Aug. 31 on all North American polyethylene, including all LLDPE and HDPE grades.

Westlake Chemical: Force majeure declared on Aug. 31 on all North American PVC and VCM.

INEOS Olefins & Polymers USA: Force majeure declared Aug. 26 on HDPE at 460,000 mt/year unit in La Porte, Texas; plant is a joint venture with Sasol.

Formosa Plastics USA: Force majeure declared Aug. 14 on PVC at its Texas and Louisiana operations; unrelated to Hurricane Laura.

SHUTDOWNS OF CHEMICAL OPERATIONS

Lake Charles

Sasol: 1.5 million mt/year and 439,000 mt/year crackers; 470,000 mt/year LLDPE; 380,000 mt/year ethylene oxide/monoethylene glycol; a new 420,000 mt/year LDPE plant slated to start up in September. Assessing damage; restart pending availability of power.

Westlake Chemical: Three chlor-alkali plants, combined capacity of 1.27 million mt/year of chlorine and 1.36 million mt/year of caustic soda; two vinyl chloride monomer plants, combined capacity of 952,543 mt/year; a 1.8 million mt/year ethylene dichloride plant; two crackers, combined capacity of 1.19 million mt/year; 200,000 mt/year LLDPE; 60,000 mt/year HDPE/LLDPE; 386,000 mt/year LDPE; 258,547 mt/year styrene. Assessing damage; restart pending availability of power.

Lotte Chemical: 1 million mt/year joint-venture cracker; 700,000 mt/year MEG plant. Assessing damage; awaiting restart pending availability of power.

LyondellBasell: 400,000 mt/year and 1 million mt/year PP plants. Assessing damage; awaiting restart pending damage assessment and availability of power.

Orange, Texas

Dow Chemical: 882,000 mt/year cracker; 236,000 mt/year LDPE; no major damage found, awaiting restart pending restoration of external infrastructure, including power.

CP Chem: 420,000 mt/year HDPE; limited visible damage found, assessment continuing, awaiting restart pending restoration of power.

Port Neches, Texas

Indorama Ventures: 235,867 mt/year cracker; 1 million mt/year EO/MEG; 238,135 mt/year propylene oxide; 988,000 mt/year MTBE. Minimal damage assessed, awaiting restart pending restoration of power.

Port Arthur, Texas

CP Chem: 855,000 mt/year cracker; limited visible damage found, assessments continuing; awaiting restart pending restoration of power.

Total/BASF: joint-venture 1 million mt/year cracker, was shut for maintenance pre-Hurricane Laura.

RESTARTS OF CHEMICAL OPERATIONS

Beaumont, Texas

ExxonMobil: 826,000 mt/year cracker; 650,000 mt/year and 325,000 mt/year LLDPE; 225,000 mt/year HDPE; 220,000 mt/year HDPE/LLDPE; minor repairs needed, restarts began Aug. 28.

Port Arthur, Texas

Motiva Enterprises: 635,000 mt/year cracker; restart began Aug. 27, flaring expected to last through Sept. 1, per regulatory filing.

Pasadena, Texas

CP Chem: Three HDPE units, combined capacity of 998,000 mt/year; working to resume normal operations.

Houston

TPC Group: 544,000 mt/year butadiene; restart began Aug. 29.

Fairway Methanol: 1.3 million mt/year Fairway methanol facility in Clear Lake shut Aug. 26, restart began Aug. 28.

Baytown, Texas

CP Chem: 1.7 million mt/year and 837,000 mt/year crackers; working to resume normal operations.

ExxonMobil: Had reduced rates at 1.25 million mt/year, 962,000 mt/year and 1.59 mt/year crackers; resumed normal rates Aug. 28.

Bayport, Texas

INEOS Styrolution: 779,000 mt/year styrene monomer. Restart began Aug. 31, per company notice on community hotline.

LyondellBasell: 1.16 million mt/year, 455,000 mt/year, 235,000 mt/year PP; restarted Aug. 28.

Baystar: 400,000 mt/year joint-venture HDPE; assessing damage, began restarting Aug. 28.

Alvin, Texas

LyondellBasell: 180,000 mt/year HDPE; restart began Aug. 29-30.

PRICES FOR PETROCHEMICALS

US spot ethylene prices rose $2.5 cents/lb to an 11-month high of 26.5 cents/lb FD Mont Belvieu on Sept. 1; the FD Choctaw marker rose 4.5 cents/lb to 27 cents/lb, an all-time high since S&P Global Platts began assessing Choctaw; 19% of US ethylene capacity remained offline.

US spot export LDPE, HDPE prices reached their highest levels in months on Sept. 1 amid multiple producer having declared force majeure in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura. LDPE prices rose $110/mt, LLDPE butene prices increased $99/mt and HDPE blowmolding rose $88/mt.

A deal for September export PVC was done Sept. 1, up $165/mt since Aug. 26 after Westlake Chemical’s force majeure declared Aug. 31 on PVC and VCM and Formosa Plastics USA’s force majeure on PVC still in place after its Aug. 14 declaration.

PORTS AND RAILROADS

Houston Ship Channel: Closed Aug. 26, reopened Aug. 27.

Sabine-Neches Waterway, channel closed Aug. 26; on Aug. 31 parts open with restriction; status unchanged on Sept. 1.

Port of Lake Charles closed Aug. 25; resumed movements Sept. 1 for vessels with a 30-foot or less draft.

Union Pacific: On Sept. 1, service restored to mainline network affected by Hurricane Laura, including a segment linking Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Beaumont, Texas; generators will continue to be used throughout the Lake Charles area until commercial power is restored; embargoes remain in place at southwest Louisiana locations.

MOTHER JONES IS VERY CONCERNED ABOUT PLASTICS POLLUTION

From an Article by Rebecca Leber, Mother Jones Magazine, March 3, 2020

Fossil fuel companies feel threatened by alternative energy—and they’re counting on plastic to save them.

Let’s say you lost your headphones, so you order replacements on Amazon. They arrive in a blue-and-white Amazon-branded plastic envelope. Inside, there’s a clear plastic bag, and inside that, a hard plastic container, and inside that, finally, the headphones themselves, which are mostly plastic.

I know the feeling that comes next: a twinge of guilt about all the unnecessary packaging, because you’ve read how our plastics have been accumulating in landfills, wildlife, and the ocean. Perhaps you’ve vowed to change your plastic-loving ways—maybe by forgoing Amazon orders or bringing your own bags to the grocery store. That’s a good start, but it won’t fix the real reason we’re drowning in a glut of supply. Fossil fuel companies are staring down a time when their signature product will no longer be so critical in our lives. As the world transitions slowly but surely away from fuel-guzzling cars, gas-powered buildings, and coal-fired power plants, industry execs must count on growth that comes from somewhere else—and they see their savior as plastics.

Those plastic-laden headphones are just one of a dizzying array of products made by the petrochemical sector, which uses fossil fuels to produce plastics, fertilizers, detergents, and even the fibers in much of our clothing. In the last decade, petrochemicals have moved from a sideshow for the oil and gas industry to a major profit machine, and the trend is expected to accelerate:

The energy research group International Energy Agency predicts that plastics’ consumption of oil will outpace that of cars by 2050. In a recent report about its 20-year growth, ExxonMobil executives assured shareholders that the company could offset losses from the transition to electric cars with growth in petrochemicals. Despite BP’s own pledge to cut its operations’ oil and gas emissions by 2050, the company has a notable carve-out for the oil and gas consumed by its petrochemical production.

A lot of that growth in petrochemicals is happening in the United States. Traditionally, most plastics have come from foreign petroleum. But plastic can also be made from ethane, an abundant byproduct of the gas extracted through fracking. With plenty of ethane flooding the market, the petrochemical industry has raced to build plants, called ethane crackers. Using incredibly high temperatures, these facilities (sometimes fueled by their own dedicated power plants) “crack” the molecular bonds of the ethane to form the building blocks of plastics, such as polyethylene. Since the US market is so saturated with plastics, many of these new facilities export these materials around the world for manufacturing into the products we recognize, from packaging to polyester clothing.

There are climate impacts at every point of the lifecycle of plastics. The production process consumes fossil fuels both to make the plastics and maintain the high temperatures for refining and manufacturing. Methane, which is both a fuel and a potent greenhouse gas, tends to leak during drilling, transport, and refining, making it an underestimated source of pollution from the oil and gas industry.

Emerging research has shown how polyethylene releases greenhouse gases when it breaks down and might interfere with the tiny algae plants that play an essential role in helping the oceans absorb excess carbon. Even when recyclable plastics make it to blue bins, much of it ends up in landfills and about 12 percent is burned at an incinerator to generate energy—which vents toxic fumes into nearby communities and more carbon pollution into the atmosphere.

A 2019 report by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) found that emissions from the plastics sector already rose 15 percent from 2012 to 2018. Last year alone, the CIEL, using Environmental Integrity Project data, estimated that plastic production contributed the equivalent of 189 large coal plants.

If plastics production continues apace, the sector is on track to reach the equivalent annual pollution of 295 large coal plants in the next 10 years, and double that by 2050, according to CIEL. An International Energy Agency report from 2018 indicated that carbon pollution from the petrochemical sector is going up 30 percent by 2050 over the sector’s current rate.

The plastics production problem might be new for the general American public, but it isn’t for the communities of color that have long bordered existing plants. Michele Roberts, a coordinator with the Environmental Justice Health Alliance, points out that chemical plants have historically been built in predominantly African American communities living in poverty, like the industrial plants that have lined the Gulf Coast, nicknamed “Cancer Alley.”

The new hub of petrochemicals growth has been in both the Gulf and western Pennsylvania. North of Corpus Christi, Texas, ExxonMobil secured hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for a massive planned steam cracker to be built by 2022, located within a mile from a high school and middle school. Texas has seen four major fires at petrochemical plants in the last year alone, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate to escape the carcinogenic air. “There’s a whole lifecycle trajectory that today impacts people of color and the poor in a major, disparate way,” Roberts says.

Even as awareness of plastics’ environmental effects has grown, the industry has never done better business. According to the chemicals and fossil fuel lobby American Chemistry Council, 340 chemical industry facilities (a number that includes more than just plastics, like fertilizer) have been announced since 2010. Of those, 190 are already underway, concentrated in fracking boomtowns in western Pennsylvania and along the Gulf Coast. One of the most massive under construction is Shell’s Monaca, Pennsylvania facility, which will be capable of producing 1.6 million metric tons of plastics each year. It will have its own rail system of 3,300 freight cars, capable of producing the equivalent of half a million cars’ worth of carbon pollution and more than a million tons of plastic resins annually, according to the New York Times.

Other oil companies have been racing to compete with even bigger deals: Chevron inked a deal last year with Qatar Petroleum for an $8 billion ethane cracker along the Gulf Coast that would pump out 2 million metric tons of ethylene each year—by 2024. And ExxonMobil is building a 1.8 million metric ton ethane steam cracker with a Saudi Arabian company near Houston to be completed by 2022.

President Trump has publicly celebrated the ascent of plastics. At an official White House event held at the Shell construction site in Monaca, he cheered the plant as a sign of the end of American dependence on foreign oil and gas. “We don’t need it from the Middle East anymore,” he said. He insisted that plastic pollution wasn’t the United States’ problem. “It’s plastic that’s floating over in the ocean and the various oceans from other places” that’s causing pollution, he said. “Plastics are fine, but you have to know what to do with them. But other countries are not taking care of their plastic use and they haven’t for a long time.”

The plastics industry takes that argument a step further, claiming that its wares help us move away from fossil fuels. For example, the American Chemistry Council claims on its website that plastics lighten products, “which means companies can ship more product with less fuel. Plastics used in cars helps make them lighter and more fuel efficient. And from appliances to electronics plastics can help to achieve greater energy efficiency over the course of a product’s life.”

It’s true that plastics can lighten the loads of vehicles and planes, but that isn’t the bulk of the plastics problem. The biggest source for plastics waste, and the fastest-growing problem for oceans and waterways, is the kind we use in clothing and for food packaging and shipping.

Judith Enck, a former EPA northeast regional administrator and founder of the environmental coalition Beyond Plastics, believes that focusing on how plastic makes cars lighter is a distraction. The real problem, she argues, is that the glut of gas has made plastics incredibly cheap, intensifying the world’s growing hunger for more single-use plastics. Ethane crackers are not an offramp from oil, she says—instead, they’re another way of embedding fossil fuels in our daily lives. “Plastics keep us on the fossil fuel treadmill.”

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See also: Researchers Now Have Even More Proof That Air Pollution Can Cause Dementia, Aaron Reuben, Mother Jones Magazine, May 2, 2019

A Mother Jones investigation prompted the study that turned up the most convincing evidence to date.

Spawning coral wrapped in waste plastics

From an Article by Katherine Bourzac, Chemical & Engineering News, Volume 96 Issue 5 | p. 7 | News of The Week, January 29, 2018

A photograph of a spawning coral with a piece of plastic wrapped around it.

Coral reefs around the world face an existential threat from overfishing, climate change, nutrient runoff, and ocean acidification. Now researchers have added another hazard to the list: plastic waste. In a survey of reefs in the Asia-Pacific region, marine biologists found that contact with plastic garbage increased corals’ risk of disease from 4 to 89% (Science 2018, DOI: 10.1126/science.aar3320).

Researchers and environmentalists have been sounding the alarm about the 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic that lands in the oceans every year. Still, says Douglas Rader, chief oceans scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the study’s coleaders, the strong connection between coral disease and plastic was extremely surprising. “This is striking, particularly in the context of all the other risks to reefs,” he says.

The plastics study, an international effort involving researchers from Cornell University and collaborators in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Australia, studied 159 reefs in Myanmar, Australia, Thailand, and Indonesia. Researchers looked for signs of disease, including bands of necrotic tissue on the corals. They also noted whether the corals were in contact with pieces of plastic 50 mm in diameter or larger. Courtney Couch, a coral disease ecologist at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology who surveyed reefs in Indonesia, says she saw many corals wrapped in plastic fishing lines and plastic bags.

This study is the first to show that plastic waste is associated with risk of disease in a marine organism. Although the researchers didn’t establish a mechanism to explain the correlation, Couch notes that plastic ocean trash can carry pathogens. Plastic also can wrap around coral, which causes stress and in turn leaves the organism vulnerable to infection.

Marine chemist Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who says he reads studies about plastic in the ocean with a skeptical eye, is convinced. “It is a lot of work to do these surveys, and the increased disease susceptibility is a big signal,” he says. The study opens the door to further research on the marine-plastic microbiome and its effects on ecosystems, Mincer says.

Rader notes that some biologists expect the world’s reef ecosystems to almost entirely collapse by 2050. “That’s a profound risk, not just to biodiversity but also to hundreds of millions of people’s livelihoods and well-being,” Rader says. But plastic pollution is a more tangible problem for coral than climate change, Couch says, and can be addressed through better waste management strategies and by using less plastic.

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See also: ARTICLE BY LAURA PARKER, PHOTOGRAPHS BY RANDY OLSON, National Geographic, June 2018

Queen Elizabeth seeks to stop spread of plastics

From an Article via Lazer Tecnologia, February 12, 2018

Queen Elizabeth has long expressed admiration for David Attenborough, an environmentalist with a track record of creating handsome, compelling movies about our planet.

Julian Kirby, campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Blue Planet’s reach now extends to the Royal households which shows how much momentum is building behind the war on plastic pollution”. But it also explored the disastrous effects of waste on the world’s waters.

Queen Elizabeth II wants to live in a cleaner and greener environment.

After watching Attenborough’s BBC documentary “Blue Planet II” a year ago, Queen Elizabeth II spearheaded a campaign that requires the guests and organizers of royal events to not use straws and bottles. According to The Telegraph, straws will also be phased out of all public cafes inside the royal residences.

Water will be served from glass bottles in all meetings at the palaces. At all levels, there’s a strong desire to tackle this issue’.

‘Across the organisation, the Royal Household is committed to reducing its environmental impact, ‘ a Palace spokesman told the Telegraph.

Plastics and other detritus line the shore of the Thames Estuary on January 2, 2018 in Cliffe, Kent. Plastic pieces, including microplastics, also end up swallowed by fish – which then causes them to die. Prince Charles has delivered several speeches about damage to the oceans. In one recent talk, he warned of an “escalating ecological and human disaster” from refuse in the seas. Charles and Dame Ellen MacArthur teamed up to offer a million-dollar cash prize to anyone with a great idea for keeping garbage out of the ocean. Ten per cent of that ends up in the sea. There are also some predictions suggesting that plastic waste in the sea will outweigh the fishes by 2050.

Appalachian Shale Cracker Enterprise (ASCENT)

WV-DEP Accepts Voluntary Remediation Program Application from ASCENT

UPDATE 8/26/2014, From TheNewsCenter, WTAP, Parkersburg, WV

Environmental officials are calling it a promising step toward bringing the proposed cracker plant to Wood County. The West Virginia DEP accepted a Voluntary Remediation Program application on August 25, 2014. The application is from the Texas company exploring the development of an ethane cracker plant in Washington.

ASCENT is hoping to get a certificate from the DEP as both parties work together to find health risks associated with the cracker plant and set standards for work to be done at the site.

“It will bring jobs to the community and through the volunteer remediation program they will be able to remediate their contamination of the site,” says Erin Brittain, with the WVDEP. Brittain says it should take about a month for the application to be reviewed and approved.

Then, ASCENT and the DEP would sign a volunteer remediation agreement, recognizing the approval of the application.

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The site consists of 363 acres, 194 of which are currently owned by ASCENT. Some 169 acres currently owned by Sabic will be transferred to ASCENT in November 2015. The West Virginia DEP says all of the property will be used for an industrial facility with an ethane cracker and three polyethylene plants.

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Update 6/04/2014

Mark Hall is a West Virginia native. He also manages a Cabell county operation for Braskem, one of two companies involved with Odebrecht on development of an ethane cracker a few miles south of Parkersburg.  While he did not have new details for the Polymer Alliance Zone, he says the second of three phases of the plant’s development has so far been successful.

“The financing is huge,” Hall told the PAZ’s members. “We can’t ask for money without raw material. At the end of the day, we have to prove we can make product once we build this facility, once we have some customers. We have to have some kind of infrastructure that says, ‘now you’ve got the ethane, now you can get it to the facility.”

A recent deal with Antero Resources helped to ensure Odebrecht had those raw materials.

Hall spoke to the annual meeting of the PAZ’s annual meeting, and the first since last November’s announcement of the cracker coming to West Virginia. In spite of the positive announcements, actual construction is still a long way off, but the signs of progress toward that construction is encouraging to both business and the community.

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UPDATE 5/15/2014

The Appalachian Shale Cracker Enterprise LLC (ASCENT) is seeking an air quality permit and a permit to evaluate the site of the proposed plant under the state’s Voluntary Remediation Program:

Six months and cracker plant plans are still moving forward. Last November 14th Odebrecht announced plans to build an ethane “cracker” in Wood County. The latest development is that Ascent, the company occupying the complex, has now submitted applications for two permits.

One is an air quality permit and the other is for an evaluation under West Virginia’s remediation program. Also since last fall, ownership of the current site of the Sabic plant in Washington, West Virginia was transferred to Ascent last January.

One issue involves the land Sabic had allowed the Tri-C program to use for its ball fields. It’s hoped a new site can be found for the baseball and softball teams to play. The permits are part of an ongoing feasibility study for plant construction.

The ASCENT parent, Odebrecht, announced plans last fall to develop a cracker facility, three polyethylene plants and associated infrastructure for water treatment and energy co-generation in Wood County. Cracker plants crack or convert ethane into ethylene, a widely used chemical compound. (Ethane is a byproduct of natural gas drilling & fracking, in some regions of the Marcellus shale territory.)