Business & Economics
Thawing CPI Job Market spurs Hires
Engineers and others working in the chemical process industries (CPI) generally are experiencing an employment situation that is significantly improved over 12 to 18 months ago, with a tentative optimism among CPI companies driving significant hiring activity. Demand for chemical…
Oseco names Darren Doyle VP of sales…
Rabie Hansen Chen McCoole Stephanou Oseco (Broken Arrow, Okla.), a manufacturer of rupture disks, names Darren Doyle vice president of sales. Koch Membrane Systems (Wilmington, Mass.), a supplier of membrane filtration technology and systems support, promotes Hamid Rabie to chief…
Plant Watch Mergers and Acquisitions
Total and CPI to study coal-to-olefins petrochemical project in China November 5, 2010 — Total S.A. (Paris, France; www.total.com) and the Chinese energy group China Power Investment Corp. (CPI) intend to build a coal-based petrochemical plant in China. The two…
Lummus lands contracts in China
Lummus Technology (The Woodlands, Tex.), a CB&I company (www.cbi.com), has been awarded a contract by Liaoning Tongyi Petrochemical Co. for the license and engineering design of grassroots OCT olefins-conversion units and Catofin dehydrogenation units at several of its sites in…
Dow increases PG capacity at Stade plant
The Dow Chemical Company (Midland, Mich.; www.dow.com) has increased its monopropylene glycol (MPG) capacity by 15%, an additional 35,000 ton/yr, in the Stade, Germany plant after completion of an advanced energy improvement and technology optimization project. “The investment in our…
BASF & Ineos JV: Styrolution
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) and Ineos Industries Holdings Limited (Lyndhurst, U.K.; www.ineos.com) have announced their intention to combine their global business activities in styrene monomers (SM), polystyrene (PS), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), styrene-butadiene block copolymers (SBC) and other styrene-based…
ABB to acquire Baldor Electric
ABB (Zurich, Switzerland; www.abb.com) and Baldor Electric Co. (Fort Smith, Ark.) have agreed that ABB will acquire Baldor in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $4.2 billion, including $1.1 billion of net debt. Under the terms of the definitive agreement,…
Süd-Chemie & TUM form strategic alliance
Süd-Chemie AG (www.sud-chemie.com) and the Technical University of Munich (both Munich, Germany; www.tum.de) have formed a strategic alliance for catalysis research. In addition to basic research in the field of catalysis, a major aspect of this co-operation will be the…
Schlumberger and Cambridge Viscosity collaborate on viscosity standards
Recognizing that oil exploration increasingly involves reservoir fluids at pressures and temperatures not previously encountered, Cambridge Viscosity (Medford, Mass.; www.cambridgeviscosity.com) and Schlumberger (www.slb.com) have formed a collaborative effort to define and develop viscosity standards appropriate for these new conditions. The…
BASF to acquire CRI/Criterion’s global styrene catalysts business
BASF SE (Ludwigshafen, Germany; www.basf.com) has signed a purchase agreement to acquire the styrene catalysts business of CRI/Criterion (Houston; www.cricatalyst.com), a wholly owned subsidiary of Shell. Financial details of the transaction are not being disclosed. CRI/Criterion is a leading global…