Tag: Investment

Brazil’s phosphate industry is on a growth dash to meet rising domestic demand. We report on the major acquisitions, investments and expansions by CMOC, Mosaic, Yara and Itafos.

“There can be no life without soil, and no soil without life.” An insightful quote from Charles Kellogg, the renowned former chief of USDA’s soils bureau.

For the protection of nozzles in sulphur forming plants it is important to prevent larger particles from entering the forming machinery and possibly blocking the nozzles. In normal operation, pipeline strainers are used. Sulphurnet has designed a new system which is suitable for continuous or batch operations and has lower maintenance costs. J. Hermans of Sulphurnet introduces the self-cleaning sulphur strainer.

G. Bowerbank and W. Blas of Shell Catalysts & Technologies discuss low cost strategies to maximise value at existing gas processing facilities. Changing solvents, introducing advanced column internals or a combination of both are relatively simple and cost-effective options for boosting production or revenue with minimal investment.

US crude production dropped rapidly during April and May, but figures released by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed that this had plateaued and there have been some well reactivations and drawdowns from crude stocks. Total production curtailments in North America were more than 2.5 million bbl/d in May. ConocoPhillips Chairman and CEO Ryan Lance said in remarks to the media that a return to pre-outbreak production levels of 13 million bbl/d looked “pretty difficult”, although a recovery to 11 million bbl/d or possibly as high as 12 million bbl/d would be possible, depending upon OPEC moves. About one third of the company’s production was shut in as of the start of June – some 400,000 bbl/d. Lance argued that low cost shale oil resources still exist in the US, but there will be pressure on companies to reduce capital spending. The Covid19 outbreak has had a major impact in investment announcements, with a large number of project delays in the US due to uncertainty over future demand levels. Planned US exploration and production expenditure is down by 50% for the second half of 2020, while the rig count was down 60% on February.

The removal of hydrogen sulphide (H2 S) has become increasingly important as the oil and gas industry moves towards more efficient and sustainable production of lower emission clean fuels. BASF and ExxonMobil* have jointly developed a proprietary amine, OASE® sulfexx™ , to help refiners and gas processors achieve sulphur removal targets while reducing their carbon footprint via lower energy consumption. This new solvent technology is suitable for low and high pressure applications and shows superior performance characteristics over generic and promoted MDEA formulations, as well as sterically hindered amines such as FLEXSORB™ SE and SE Plus.

Nitrogen+Syngas asked some of the industry’s leading EPC companies what they are doing to make construction sites safer around the world in pursuit of the goal for zero incident safety performance. Read on to find out what approaches have been taken by Maire Tecnimont Group, thyssenkrupp, Toyo Engineering Corporation and Saipem.

Many fertilizers plants are looking to reduce the overall maintenance costs of their critical heat exchangers. Barinder J. S. Ghai of Sandvik Materials Technology takes a look at the life cycle costs of tube materials for heat exchangers in ammonia plants.

We report on how the fertilizer industry and individual companies are working to mitigate the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

ICL Group has launched an interactive online advisory forum for farmers and agronomists.