rongsheng petrochemical singapore pte ltd made in china

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Private Chinese oil refiner and petrochemical manufacturers Hengli Petrochemical Corp and Rongsheng Petrochemical Corp have each hired a new executive for its Singapore trading desk, company officials said on Wednesday.

Hengli Petrochemical International Pte Ltd, the trading unit for Hengli Petrochemical Co. Ltd, hired James Zhang, formerly Head of Energy, Asia, at ICBC Standard Bank, as its deputy president to drive the company’s strategy and its day-to-day operations, a company spokesman said.

Separately, Zhu Yanyu, previously a veteran oil products trading manager at state-owned oil and gas company PetroChina, started in June at Rongsheng Petrochemical (Singapore) Pte Ltd as a deputy general manager in charge of refined products trading, said two company officials.

The Singapore operation is the international trading unit for Rongsheng Petrochemical Corp, which is a key stakeholder in Zhejiang Petrochemical Corp (ZPC), one of China’s largest private refiners which operates a 400,000 barrels per day refinery in east China’s Zhoushan.

SINGAPORE, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Rongsheng Petrochemical, the trading arm of Chinese private refiner Zhejiang Petrochemical, has bought at least 5 million barrels of crude for delivery in December and January next year in preparation for starting a new crude unit by year-end, five trade sources said on Wednesday.

Rongsheng bought at least 3.5 million barrels of Upper Zakum crude from the United Arab Emirates and 1.5 million barrels of al-Shaheen crude from Qatar via a tender that closed on Tuesday, the sources said.

Rongsheng’s purchase helped absorbed some of the unsold supplies from last month as the company did not purchase any spot crude in past two months, the sources said.

Zhejiang Petrochemical plans to start trial runs at one of two new crude distillation units (CDUs) in the second phase of its refinery-petrochemical complex in east China’s Zhoushan by the end of this year, a company official told Reuters. Each CDU has a capacity of 200,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Zhejiang Petrochemical started up the first phase of its complex which includes a 400,000-bpd refinery and a 1.2 million tonne-per-year ethylene plant at the end of 2019. (Reporting by Florence Tan and Chen Aizhu, editing by Louise Heavens and Christian Schmollinger)

At 10:37 am Singapore time (0237 GMT), the ICE Brent October crude futures were up 16 cents/b (0.36%) from the Aug. 20 settle at SUD45.07/b, while the new front-month NYMEX October light sweet crude contract was up by 9 cents/b (0.21%) at USD42.91/b.

OPEC+ members that had exceeded their production quotas in May, June and July will have to cut a combined extra 2.31 million b/d as compensation by the end of September, S&P Global Platts reported earlier. Notably, Iraq and Nigeria were the two biggest laggards, overproducing by 851,000 b/d over the three months, while Nigeria was over its limit by 315,000 b/d.

"Industry reports estimate that approximately 1.2 million b/d of additional cuts through August and September are needed to offset oversupply to date, implying OPEC+ cuts fall to 8.9 million b/d in the current phase instead of the 7.7 million b/d target," Stephen Innes, chief global markets strategist at AxiCorp, said in a Aug. 21 note.

And in September 2019, six world"s major petrochemical companies in Flanders, Belgium, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and the Netherlands (Trilateral Region) announcedthe creation of a consortium to jointly investigate how naphtha or gas steam crackers could be operated using renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels. The Cracker of the Future consortium, which includes BASF, Borealis, BP, LyondellBasell, SABIC and Total, aims to produce base chemicals while also significantly reducing carbon emissions. The companies agreed to invest in R&D and knowledge sharing as they assess the possibility of transitioning their base chemical production to renewable electricity.

Refining and petrochemical manufacturing contributes about 5% of China"s total carbon emissions, or about 400-500 million tonnes, told Liu Minghui, ZPC"s vice president, at a live-streamed oil seminar hosted by Zhejiang provincial government in Zhoushan.

ZPC is working with China"s Tsinghua University to develop crude-to-olefin know-how that is expected to reduce carbon footprint by nearly half compared to the traditional process of obtaining feedstock for petrochemicals during the crude refining process, Liu said.

"For the carbon emissions target, it is not what somebody asks China to do, but what China wants to do," said Wu Qiunan, chief economist with PetroChina International, a subsidiary of state-run PetroChina Co. Ltd.

"From design to construction [of new refining capacities], we are fully committed to the new technologies to control environmental pollution. Going forward, any new investment that we are going to make will be more efficient in environment protection," said Chen Hongbing, deputy general manager with privately-held Rongsheng Petrochemical (Singapore).

"We need to be at least half a step ahead in today"s market. We started to invest in solar PV and wind power five years ago, and following the 14th Five Year Plan"s call, we have developed more extensive plans on new energy, new material and decarbonization," said Sun Xin, director of Shenghong Petrochemical, an emerging private refining and petrochemicals company.

Rongsheng"s Chen said the refiner"s business strategy is always driven by economics, but the industry expects emissions regulations to lower China"s exports and more research is needed to assess whether cross-border carbon taxes will fully halt refined products exports or only impact a small volume.

PetroChina"s Wu and Sun both said refining and petrochemicals industries provide materials and components to manufacturers of electric vehicles, solar PV modules and wind turbines, and those products" exports imply "indirect exports" for the sectors.

Emissions from refining and petrochemicals production is due to be covered by the national compliance carbon market by 2025, according to China"s environment ministry.

It remains unclear when the refining and petrochemicals companies will be fully enrolled into the carbon market, Chen said on the sidelines of the conference.

Zhejiang Petroleum, a refining and petrochemicals company jointly established by the provincial government and Glencore Asian Holdings, has formed a carbon asset management subsidiary and is actively looking at carbon trading opportunities in Singapore, an executive said.