McDermott International, Inc. (Houston; www.mcdermott.com) and CB&I (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.cbi.com) announced that the companies have agreed to combine in an all-stock transaction to create a premier fully vertically integrated onshore-offshore company, with a broad engineering, procurement, construction and installation…
Técnicas Reunidas S.A. (TR; Madrid, Spain; www.tecnicasreunidas.es) has been selected by the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR) for the execution of a modernization project at the Heydar Aliyev petroleum refinery in Baku, Azerbaijan. The aim of this project…
Sibur (Moscow; www.sibur.com) has launched a terephthalic acid production upgrade at the POLIEF Blagoveshchensk site to expand its capacity to 350,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr). The project seeks to improve the site’s production efficiency and environmental safety. Terephthalic acid is…
AkzoNobel’s Specialty Chemicals business (Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.akzonobel.com) is studying plans to expand production of high-purity vacuum salt at its Delfzijl site in the Netherlands. The project would increase output at the facility by around 25%. The ongoing study is…
Celanese Corporation (Dallas, Tex.; www.celanese.com) announced the signing of a definitive agreement for Celanese to acquire Omni Plastics and its subsidiaries, including the distributor Resinal de Mexico. Omni Plastics is headquartered and has a compounding facility in Evansville, Indiana, with…
W.R. Grace & Co. (Columbia, Md.; www.grace.com) today signed an agreement to acquire the Polyolefin Catalysts business of Albemarle Corporation (Charlotte, N.C.; www.albemarle.com) for $416 million. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018, subject to…
Global Bioenergies (Evry, France; www.global-bioenergies.com) announced the start of the scale-up phase of a process converting renewable resources into acetone and isopropanol. The markets for both these 3-carbon compounds are well established and worth billions of dollars. In a further…
Axens (Rueill-Malmaison, France; www.axens.net) has completed the expansion of its Calvert City, Kentucky manufacturing plant to produce its industry leading Impulse hydroprocessing catalysts Series in North America. Impulse is a complete range of high performance Hydrotreating catalysts offering flexibility and…
Veolia’s (Paris, France; www.veolia.com) V recycling and waste recovery business in France has been awarded a nine-year contract worth €95 million to improve the Reims energy-recovery plant. Treating the 60,000 metric tons (m.t.) of final waste generated each year by…
Compact Membrane Systems (CMS; Newport, Del.; www.compactmembrane.com) announced a pilot of its new Optiperm olefins-separation technology with DowDuPont. The project will field test Optiperm membranes, with the ultimate goal of testing a demonstration-size unit with membrane area greater than 100…