Tag: Construction

Veolia says that its subsidiary Veolia North America has signed an agreement for the divestment of Veolia North America Regeneration Services, which includes its sulphuric acid and hydrofluoric acid regeneration activities for refineries, to private equity firm American Industrial Partners for $620 million. These activities represented revenues of around $350 million in 2023. The financial closure of the transaction is expected soon. Veolia’s Sulphuric Acid Regeneration Business includes its sulphuric acid and potassium hydroxide regeneration, as well as sulphur gas recovery, and sulphur-based products production businesses.

Saudi Aramco has sold another tranche of 1.54 billion shares, amounting to 0.64% of the company’s total ownership. The sale, at 27-29 riyals per share, was oversubscribed by a factor of five, making it more popular than the previous IPO, in 2019, which sold 1.5% of the company’s shares for a total of $29.4 billion. Foreign take up of shares was also higher this time, with more than half of sales to foreign investors, compared to 23% for the 2019 sale. However, it remains relatively small in scale compared to Saudi Arabia’s ambitions as part of its Vision 2030 plan to encourage more foreign direct investment and wean the country off its dependence on oil. Aramco is the world’s largest oil company in terms of both daily crude production and market cap, and remains 82% in the hands of the government and 16% held via the country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF).

With all of the focus on low carbon ammonia and methanol developments, one could occasionally be forgiven for forgetting that most of the syngas industry relies upon natural gas as a feedstock, and that gas pricing and availability remain the key determinants of profitability for producers. As our article this issue discusses, even low carbon ammonia is likely to be largely based on natural gas, albeit with carbon capture and storage, at least for the remainder of this decade.

A lot of low-carbon ammonia projects have been announced in recent years – so many, in fact, you’ve probably lost count.

Fertilizers will always be fundamental to food production, but they will also have to be low emissions, environmentally friendly and support healthy soils. In this article, Dr Alexander Schmitt, Chief Marketing Officer, Anglo American Crop Nutrients, explains how polyhalite meets all three of these criteria – while also helping to increase the quantity and quality of food a farmer can produce.

Morocco’s OCP is continuing to expand its phosphate fertilizer production capacity. This includes the construction of new sulphur-burning acid capacity to support phosphate production and provide carbon-free power.

Qatar construction services company UCC Holding has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Kazakh Ministry of Energy for a gas treatment plant at the Kashagan field with a capacity of 6 billion cubic meters as part of the Phase 2B expansion. The memorandum was signed by Minister of Energy Almassadam Satkaliyev and Mohamed Moutaz Al Khayyat, chairman of UCC Holding.

In January, Kazakh uranium producer Kazatomprom warned of potential adjustments to its 2024 uranium production due to challenges with sulphuric acid availability and construction delays at new uranium mining operations. In a statement the company said that its projected uranium output for 2024 will be between 21,000 t/a and 22,500 t/d U3 O8 , around 20% lower than the amount it had been expecting to be able to mine. Kazatomprom’s uranium output was 21,100 t/a U3O8 in 2023, down 1% on 2022 figures, with output flat during 4Q 2023. While it said it had sufficient inventory in stock to cover contracted deliveries in 2024, there could be problems for 2025 deliveries.

Mark Brouwer and Jo Eijkenboom of ureaknowhow.com examine the major shifts in global urea production. They also discuss the future of the urea industry and, in particular, how the sector is being affected by the increasing focus on low-carbon ammonia production.

Freeport Indonesia has inaugurated the $250 million expansion at its PT Smelting copper smelter in Gresik, East Java, in a ceremony attended by Indonesian president Joko Widodo. Smelting, a joint venture between Freeport McMoRan and Mitsubishi Materials, has increased copper concentrate processing capacity to 1.3 million t/a, up from the previous figure of 1.0 million t/a, with copper cathode production of 300,000 t/a.