At yesterday’s meeting in Vienna, the Borealis (www.borealisgroup.com) supervisory board approved a €17-million investment to upgrade one of its polyethylene (PE) plants in Porvoo, Finland. The project includes a new ethylene compressor as well as an upgrade of the monomer…
Natural gas production in the U.S. will be 25% greater from 2011 to 2035 than previous assessments, and the share of U.S. energy consumption accounted for by imported energy will decline to 18% of the total by 2035, according to…
North American chemical producers who rely on natural gas feedstocks are in a strong industry position heading into 2011, says a report released today from Booz & Co., Inc. (New York; www.booz.com). The 2011 Chemicals Industry Perspective report discussed the…
Bechtel Corp. (San Francisco, Calif.; www.bechtel.com) will provide design and project management support services for the first commercial nuclear power plant in the Middle East. The plant will be one of four that a consortium headed by the Korean Electric…
The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) plans to build a propylene glycol (PG) plant in Map Ta Phut, Thailand, with a production capacity of up to 150,000 ton/yr. The new PG facility will utilize propylene oxide (PO) derived from…
Foster Wheeler AG, (Zug, Switzerland,; www.fwc.com) announced today that its Global Engineering and Construction Group has acquired the CEntry Sulfur Recovery proprietary technology from FLSmidth & Co.. The acquisition includes patents, know-how and skilled personnel. The terms of the transaction…
The Fieldbus Foundation (Austin, Tex.; www.fieldbus.org) today announced that its Foundation High Speed Ethernet Remote I/O (HSE-RIO) preliminary specification is now available to its membership for review. Part of the foundation’s Wireless and Remote I/O initiative, this specification defines the…
Fluor Corp. (Irving, Tex.; www.fluor.com) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sibur (Moscow; www.sibur.ru), Russia’s leading petrochemical company, for the establishment of a joint venture with the Scientific Research and Design Institute for Gas Processing (NIPIgaspererabotka) in Krasnodar,…
Lanxess AG (Leverkusen, Germany; www.lanxess.com) and Dutch company Royal DSM N.V. (Heerlen, the Netherlands; www.dsm.com) have reached an agreement in principle involving the sale of DSM Elastomers to Lanxess for €310 million on a cash and debt-free basis. DSM Elastomers…
Solvay S.A. (Brussels, Belgium; www.solvay.com) is studying the construction of an epichlorohydrin production plant in Taixing, China, with an initial capacity of 100,000 ton/yr. The plant, which is expected to start producing in 2013, will be based on Solvay's innovative…