LyondellBasell Industries Research Articles

LyondellBasell delays refinery closure

LyondellBasell Industries is delaying plans to close its Houston refinery by the end of 2023. The company cites favorable performance at the operation, which has started to turn a profit after years of underperformance, and now plans to shutter the unit by the first quarter of 2025. LyondellBasell says that it still aims to convert the site into a hub for sustainability projects, such as plastics recycling, and that it is also considering green and blue hydrogen production at the complex.

LyondellBasell is getting green bonds

LyondellBasell Industries is launching a public offering of green bonds. The principal of the bonds will be $500 million and will bear a 5.625% interest rate. The proceeds from the bonds will go toward circular economy, renewable energy, pollution prevention, and energy efficiency projects. Green bonds have become popular as a way to connect chemical companies with investors interested in backing sustainability. In March, Air Products raised more than $1.3 billion in two bond offerings that it intends to use for low-carbon ammonia and sustainable aviation fuels, and Eastman Chemical closed a $500 million green bond offering.

Business Roundup

BUSINESS Business Roundup ShareShare onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail C&EN, 2023, 101 (15), p 15May 8, 2023Cite this:C&EN 101, 15, 15AbstractJohnson Matthey has agreed to sell its diagnostics services business to Sullivan Street Partners and Souter Investments for $69 million. The business, which provides equipment for diagnosing problems in oil and gas production, has annual sales of about $72 million. LyondellBasell Industries is buying the 50% of the plastics recycler Quality Circular Polymers (QCP) that it doesn’t already own from the waste management firm Veolia. QCP operates mechanical recycling plants in Belgium and the Netherlands. PureCycle Technologies has achieved mechanical completion of its plant in Ironton, Ohio, which will use a solvent-based process to purify postconsumer polypropylene for recycling. When operating, the plant will be able to produce nearly 50,000 metric tons of recycled polypropylene per year. Nouryon will expand capacity at its facility in Ningbo, China, for the organic peroxides Perkadox 14 and Trigonox 101. The firm says annual capacity for each polymer additive will double, to 6,000 metricView: PDF | Full Text HTML

C&EN’s top 50 US chemical producers

Despite headwinds like the war in Europe, high inflation, and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US chemical industry made it out of 2022 in relatively good shape. That is one interpretation of the results of C&EN’s new survey of the top 50 US chemical producers, which is based on these firms’ financial results for 2022. These 50 chemical makers posted combined sales of $376.7 billion, an 11.4% increase from a year ago and a new record for the annual survey. Only six firms posted a sales decline. But for the 43 firms that disclose profit figures, combined chemical operating profits fell 4.8%, to $55.2 billion. Sixteen firms posted an earnings decline. One company, Trinseo, posted a loss. Many of those that reported reduced profits—Dow, ExxonMobil, LyondellBasell Industries, and Westlake—are large petrochemical makers. The petrochemical industry built a lot of capacity in recent years, and the sector is

LyondellBasell mulls 2 investments

LyondellBasell Industries is considering building a propylene plant at its Channelview, Texas, complex. The plant would have 400,000 metric tons (t) per year of capacity for propylene made from ethylene and butene using a metathesis reaction. LyondellBasell would use the monomer to make polypropylene and propylene oxide. Separately, the company says it is advancing plans for a plant in Wesseling, Germany, that would use its MoReTec technology to break down plastic waste into a feedstock that can be turned into plastics again. The plant would be able to process about 50,000 t of waste annually.

LyondellBasell moves on recycling initiatives

LyondellBasell Industries plans to build the first commercial-scale plant using its MoReTec plastics recycling technology at its complex in Wesseling, Germany. The catalytic process breaks down plastic waste into feedstocks that petrochemical plants can reprocess into new plastics. Feedstock for the plant will come from a procurement and sorting facility that Lyondell will build with 23 Oaks Investments. Separately, Lyondell and Genox Recycling plan a joint venture in Zhaoqing, China, for a plant that mechanically recycles plastics.— Alex Tullo

Big Gulf Coast projects eyed

A commodity chemical building boom may be in store for the US Gulf Coast. Ineos says it is evaluating sites for a world-scale acetic acid and derivatives plant in the region. The firm, which expects to make a final investment decision by the end of 2023, says the region offers competitively priced feedstocks, among other advantages. Ineos says it is not proceeding with a plant for the acetic acid derivative vinyl acetate at its site in Hull, England, because of a “volatile and uncompetitive energy costs outlook.” Separately, an application for property tax breaks filed with local authorities shows that LyondellBasell Industries is planning a polyethylene plant for its complex at Corpus Christi, Texas. And according to similar state property tax documents, Occidental Chemical plans to invest in its chlor-alkali complex in Deer Park, Texas. The company says the project will boost chlorine and caustic soda output while lowering the

The chemical industry’s new green deals

When the petrochemical maker LyondellBasell Industries announced in April that it would close its century-old refinery in Houston by the end of 2023, the news was hardly a surprise. The facility, which processes heavy imported crude oil to make fuels and aromatics, had lost money for the past 3 years. LyondellBasell had been looking to sell it since September to no avail. What was unusual about the announcement was then–interim CEO Ken Lane’s declaration in a press release that shutting the unit “advances the Company’s decarbonization goals.” The refinery accounts for nearly 15% of LyondellBasell’s emissions from industrial processes and purchased energy. In a conference call later that month, Lane added that the 300-hectare site would be ideal for Lyondell to repurpose for sustainability initiatives. The company has been piloting a pyrolysis process that breaks down postconsumer plastics into petrochemical feedstocks, and the Houston refinery has hydrotreaters that can aid

LyondellBasell appoints Vanacker CEO

LyondellBasell Industries has appointed Peter Vanacker, head of the Finnish refiner and chemical maker Neste, its next CEO. He will succeed Bob Patel, who has led LyondellBasell since 2015 and is leaving at the end of December to take the reins at W. R. Grace, a much smaller firm. Vanacker will start next June. Kenneth Lane, LyondellBasell’s head of olefins and polyolefins, will be interim CEO.

LyondellBasell facilities draw fines and lawsuits

LyondellBasell Industries has agreed to install $50 million of emission control equipment and pay $3.4 million in fines to settle an enforcement action by the US Environmental Protection Agency . Separately, the family of a worker killed in a July 27 accident at a LyondellBasell facility is suing the company for $1 million. The EPA complaint concerns 21 flares at LyondellBasell facilities in Iowa and Texas. The flares are intended to oxidize unrecoverable methane, ethane, and other hydrocarbons into CO 2 . The EPA says improper operation of the flares has led to emissions of particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, ozone, and other pollutants. On some of the flares , LyondellBasell will install recovery equipment to capture the waste hydrocarbons instead of flaring them. The firm will also install monitoring and control equipment to ensure complete combustion, and it will perform and publicly disclose fence-line air quality measurements. The settlement

LyondellBasell may sell its Houston refinery

LyondellBasell Industries is considering strategic options, including a sale, for its refinery in Houston—a move that would make it a pure-play petrochemical company. The refinery, among the largest in the US, can process 268,000 barrels of crude oil per day into fuels and chemical feedstocks. LyondellBasell says it might be a better fit in a company with a large refining system. The firm took full control of the refinery in 2006, when it bought the stake held by Venezuela-owned Citgo Petroleum for $2.1 billion.

FDA approves the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine

The US Food and Drug Administration gave its full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Aug. 23, making it the first COVID-19 vaccine to be licensed by the US government. The vaccine will be sold as Comirnaty and is approved for people 16 and older. Almost immediately, some companies, including Chevron, instituted vaccine mandates for some workers. And in advance of the Pfizer approval, many biotech and drug companies had implemented corporate vaccine requirements. But other companies, such as Dow, Eastman Chemical, and LyondellBasell Industries, are balking at requiring employees to be vaccinated, suggesting that the Pfizer approval will incentivize employees to get the shots. Eastman told C&EN that it has started a voluntary vaccine verification program, allowing people who have been inoculated to display their status with stickers to wear on their hats and helmets. Dow says it has been providing vaccines to its employees. At sites where

Last synthetic ethanol plant in US to close

The petrochemical giant LyondellBasell Industries will exit the synthetic ethanol business—one of its longest-standing operations—by the end of October. The company is closing its ethanol plant in Tuscola, Illinois, where it makes the alcohol for industrial applications via the hydration of ethylene. It is the last synthetic ethanol plant in the US. The firm is also closing a plant in Newark, New Jersey, where it makes denatured ethanol. About 100 employees in Tuscola and 5 in Newark will be affected. LyondellBasell says that in recent years synthetic ethanol has struggled against the fermentation-based competition, much of which is used as fuel. “Long-range profitability is impacted due to an oversupply of fuel-grade ethanol and falling price premiums,” a LyondellBasell spokeswoman says. According to the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy, the price of fuel-grade ethanol averaged $0.62 per L in 2014 and had fallen to $0.23 per L by 2020. Scott

Circular plastics fund gets investment

Dow, LyondellBasell Industries, and Nova Chemicals have established the Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund with the investment firm Closed Loop Partners. The polymer makers have seeded the fund with $25 million and want to expand it to $100 million, with the aim of making investments that lead to the recycling of more than 225,000 metric tons of polyethylene and polypropylene. The three areas they will target for investment are increasing plastics collection, upgrading recycling systems, and manufacturing that uses recycled polymers.

Lyondell and Suez buy plastics recycler

LyondellBasell Industries and the waste management firm Suez have jointly purchased the plastics recycling firm Tivaco. The partners will fold Tivaco into Quality Circular Polymers, a polyolefin re...

Chemical sales bounce back

The latest batch of chemical companies to report third-quarter earnings upholds the thesis that the economy is recovering from the downturn brought on by COVID-19 lockdowns. Chemours reports that its third-quarter sales fell 11.3% compared with the year-earlier period but rose 12.8% from the second quarter. The company had higher titanium dioxide pigment sales for architectural coatings and more demand for refrigerants for automobiles. Eastman Chemical’s sales dropped 8.7% compared with last year’s third quarter but increased 10.3% versus the second. “With demand having improved throughout the third quarter and into October, we entered the fourth quarter with solid momentum,” Eastman CEO Mark Costa says in a statement. LyondellBasell Industries saw sales drop by 22.3% year over year but increase 22.2% from the prior quarter. Polyethylene demand, which has been strong even during the pandemic because of the need for consumer packaging, has been a plus for the company. Similarly,

LyondellBasell will buy into Sasol’s new complex

LyondellBasell Industries has agreed to pay $2 billion for a 50% stake in an ethylene cracker and two polyethylene plants that Sasol recently built in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The transaction may finally conclude the troubled saga of Sasol’s Lake Charles project, which had complications and cost overruns that led to a shake-up at the South African company’s headquarters. In addition to the cracker and polyethylene plants that will soon be half-owned by Lyondell, the new complex includes ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, ethoxylation, and Ziegler and Guerbet alcohol plants. When the project was approved in 2017, Sasol expected it to cost $8.9 billion. The firm ended up spending $12.5 billion. The debacle prompted Sasol’s co-CEOs to step down last October. In March, Sasol said it was looking to divest $6 billion worth of assets worldwide, partly by taking on a partner in the complex. The transaction is expected to close by

LyondellBasell opens recycling pilot plant

LyondellBasell Industries has started up a pilot plant in Ferrara, Italy, that is running its new MoReTec process for polymer recycling, developed with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The sy...

Sanitizer capacity up again

Chemical firms around the world are adding yet more production of hand sanitizer and sanitizer raw materials in an effort to meet unprecedented demand in the face of COVID-19. Huntsman has begun manufacturing multi-ton quantities of sanitizer in McIntosh, Alabama, using isopropyl alcohol (IPA) supplied by LyondellBasell Industries. Shell Chemical is increasing production of IPA at plants in Pernis, the Netherlands, and Sarnia, Ontario, and asking customers that use the alcohol for nonmedical purposes to delay orders. The firm says it will donate 2.5 million L of IPA to the Dutch health-care sector and a further 125,000 L to Canada. Dow plans to make hand sanitizer at five sites across the globe for more than 800,000 225-gram bottles. Clariant has started producing 2 million L of hand sanitizer per month in Gendorf, Germany, with ethanol supplied by CropEnergies. Lubrizol is increasing output of a polymeric thickening agent to enable production

Ray E. Hoff

Ray E. Hoff, 85, died on July 10, 2019, in Palatine, Illinois. “Ray Hoff was a very kind person who loved chemistry. After earning his PhD from the University of Utah, he joined BFGoodrich to conduct synthetic rubber research. In 1967 he joined a new polyethylene company, Chemplex Company (precursor of LyondellBasell Industries) to further develop the Phillips catalyst to produce high-density polyethylene. During his tenure, Ray published 29 US patents and many journal articles. He retired in 1993, but his passion for chemistry continued as a teacher at Roosevelt University. He also consulted for PQ Corporation in Pennsylvania. He edited a very successful book, Handbook of Transition Metal Polymerization Catalysts. The second edition of this book was published in 2018.”—Tom Pullakat, friend and colleague Most recent title: Research scientist, Quantum Chemical Education: BS, Beloit College, 1956; PhD, chemistry, University of Utah, 1964 Survivors: Wife, Susan; sons, Jonathan and David;