Tag: Contract

As recently as five years ago, decarbonising fertilizer production was little more than an aspiration.

CF Industries has signed an agreement with thyssenkrupp to develop a commercial-scale green ammonia project at its Donaldsonville production complex in Louisiana.

We report on the latest potash mining and processing technology from Andritz, Ebner, Köppern, K+S and Veolia. Recent case studies for potash projects globally are also provided.

The Belarusian Potash Company (BPC) has agreed new annual potash supply contracts with India and China.

Copper major Freeport-McMoRan is reportedly on verge of finalising a $2.8 billion deal with China’s Tsingshan to build a copper smelter in Weda Bay, Indonesia. The Indonesian government said that the companies were aiming to conclude negotiations by the end of March. It also said that most of the financing will be borne by Tsingshan, with Freeport possibly only needing to provide funding for 7.5% of the total project cost. The smelter would have a copper concentrate input capacity of 2.4 million t/a.

Storm Uri which blanketed the southern states of the US with snow, and led to widespread power outages in Texas, has had a major impact upon US Gulf Coast and Southern-Midwest refined products supply. Most Gulf Coast refineries were shut down or forced to operate at reduced rates. IHS Markit estimated that more than 5.2 million bbl/d of Gulf Coast capacity and 730,000 bbl/d in PADD 2 was impacted by the winter weather at its height, and close to 20% of lower 48 US natural gas production was shut-in in the first half of February. A drop in crude oil production of between 2.2 and 4 million bbl/d was estimated.

Despite the unprecedented economic woes inflicted by the Covid-19 pandemic, the global MOP industry still managed to endure in 2020, says Andy Hemphill , senior editor for potash at ICIS Fertilizers, thanks to its ‘essential’ status.

The United States has imposed duties on Russian and Moroccan phosphate imports.

Norilsk Nickel has finally closed down its nickel smelting operation at Nikel in Russia’s Murmansk region; the company’s oldest still operating production facility. The shutdown is part of the company’s environmental programme, which aims to significantly reduce its environmental impact at all production sites. The Nikel closure will eliminate SO2 emissions in the cross-border area with Norway, which had become a major bone of contention with the Norwegian government. Norilsk aims to reduce SO2 emissions at Kola by 50% by the end of 2020 and 85% by the end of 2021, and is modernising its production in Monchegorsk, including the construction of new state-of-the-art facilities.

Construction work has begun on a new hydrocracking complex for the Assiut refinery in Egypt, in the central Nile valley, according to TechnipFMC plc, who won the $1 billion engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract for the project. The contract involves construction of new processing units including a vacuum distillation unit, a diesel hydrocracking unit, a delayed coker unit, a distillate hydrotreating unit and a hydrogen production unit which will use TechnipFMC’s proprietary steam reforming technology.