Economics
Refiner Valero's profit beats but margins stay under pressure
US refiner Valero Energy Corp. reported a quarterly profit that beat analysts' reduced estimates, even as the company's refining margin continued to be gutted by a spike in gasoline and distillate inventories.
As market sours, ships carrying LPG anchor off Singapore
After a flood of US exports into the region, the Asian market is awash with LPG and supplies are being stored in ships anchored off Singapore.
An operations reference model for common refinery operations
Refineries are large, highly automated, complex systems involving hundreds of people, thousands of work processes, thousands of control loops and tens of thousands of input/output points.
Industry Metrics
The impact of Canadian and French refinery outages caused margins to fall slightly in the Atlantic Basin and Europe, despite stronger gasoline demand and higher inventories.
Business Trends: Asia’s smaller downstream players have big plans
Most of the focus on Asian downstream capacity construction revolves around large consuming nations, such as China and India.
Viewpoint: Envisioning a “future-proof” refinery of the future
Trying to predict how global refining markets will look in 2026 is a losing proposition. The only thing we can count on with any real certainty is uncertainty.
Reliability: Machinery quality assessment on twin-screw compressors
Machinery quality assessment (MQA) is similar to bid conditioning, and both relate to structured efforts.
Global: Meeting Africa’s demand for oil products
Demand for refined oil products is expected to continue growing in Africa, both in the short and medium terms. However, the continent’s refining capacity is unlikely to keep pace as commercial risks threaten to hold back planned new refineries and the expansion of existing facilities.
Industry Metrics
US refinery utilization rates have increased in some areas following the peak of maintenance season.
Business Trends: Will India be Asia’s next downstream powerhouse?
The Asia-Pacific region dominates in the total number of active projects in all sectors of the downstream hydrocarbon processing industry. Just as China has seen unprecedented growth over the past decade, India is emerging as the globe’s new oil demand center.
- SIBUR produces test batch of first hexane plant in Russia 8/28
- Universal Fuel Technologies’ SAF accepted into ASTM Clearinghouse for qualification 8/28
- Honeywell technology to fuel Syzygy Plasmonics' SAF project 8/28
- Sinopec wins engineering contract for Saudi Arabian green hydrogen/ammonia project 8/28
- Russia's idle oil refining capacity record high after Ukrainian drone attacks 8/28
- Brazil approves temporary antidumping measures against Canadian, U.S. polyethylene resins 8/28
