🏭 November 2022: Round-Up

Good morning. Welcome to the November 2022 Round-Up! If you're new here, this email is sent out at the end of each month to sum up what was covered.

Here's what we talked about last month:

• Nov 2nd ($): Plastic Energy and Ineos' agreement and Arkema's phosphorus divestment

• Nov 4th ($): Solugen's Series D round and Baker Hughes' graphene acquisition

• Nov 9th ($): DuPont bailed on Rogers and Shell is pre-ordering cellulosic ethanol

• Nov 11th ($): Solvay is resuming its soda expansion and Ascend bought a recycler

• Nov 14th: Albemarle's upcoming bromine expansion and Covestro's newly issued green bond

• Nov 16th ($): PureCycle's new plants are delayed and NET Power's first site

• Nov 18th ($): Shell finally started-up in Pennsylvania and CP Chem's new PAO site

• Nov 21st: CP Chem and QatarEnergy's $8.5B site and Neste's cooking oil acquisition

• Nov 23rd ($): LyondellBasell's metathesis possibility and LG Chem's new CAM site

• Nov 28th: SABIC's first crude-to-chemicals plant and BASF's metal treating chemical

• Nov 30th ($): Brenntag and Univar's potential merger and Mitsubishi's MMA closure

The world of petrochemicals saw some big headlines: Shell's long-awaited site in Pennsylvania, CP Chem and QatarEnergy's big site on the gulf, and SABIC's first crude-to-chemicals plant.

Shell's site ($) is special just because it was the only shale-gas-driven site to be constructed in the US northeast, and it's been in the works for a decade—everything else that was built in the last decade and a half was built along the Gulf Coast, like CP Chem and QatarEnergy's future site.

SABIC's crude-to-chemicals site is a far cry from the $20 billion site they teased before the pandemic, but the trend is still worth watching as the value of crude oil increasingly becomes materially-derived (as opposed to fuel-derived).

While not quite as significant, LyondellBasell's potential metathesis site expansion and CP Chem's PAO site are both great examples of more niche petrochemicals that you don't hear about quite as much. Worth a review if you have the time, especially because of the price dynamics associated with LyondellBasell's choice, and the potential applications for CP Chem's PAOs.

The sustainability scene saw some updates in recycling: Plastic Energy and Ineos agreed to build a site, PureCycle delayed it's upcoming sites, and Ascend bought a company that recycles carpets.

At a high level the Plastic Energy and Ineos site announcement sounds just like all of the other upcoming pyrolysis-based molecular recycling sites out there. The real thing to take away from this one is that the petrochemical players are taking increasingly bigger bets on the technology—this site, when it was first talked two years ago, was initially going to process 33,000 tons of plastic waste per year—now they are designing it to be 3x as large.

Both PureCycle's delays and Ascend's acquisition are a little different because in theory they are processing plastic waste that has already been sorted significantly (PureCycle is just after PP, Ascend after nylon-based carpets). If you want to avoid that sorting step prior to depolymerization you'll be dealing with contaminants, such as chlorine from PVC, in your plastic-waste-based oil. That's why ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell are getting into the pre-processing game (which we talked in October).

Per usual, we also talked about some other stuff that doesn't fit the petrochemical or sustainability themes, like Solvay's soda ash expansion ($) and Albemarle's bromine expansion. These are important to review if you missed them, because they are great examples of non-oil-based value chains, and those expansions don't happen very frequently.

Thanks for reading!

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