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Russia bans ammonium nitrate exports until April to support domestic farmers

March 3, 2022

Russia bans ammonium nitrate exports until April to support domestic farmers

Russia has banned the export of ammonium nitrate (AN) from Feb. 2 to April 1, in a widely-expected move by the government as it seeks to guarantee affordable supplies for domestic farmers following the spike in global fertilizer prices.

Ammonia gas, one of the key materials in AN production, has seen prices rise more than fivefold since October 2020. Rising costs for natural gas, a key input of AN production, have also impacted AN prices. Those higher prices have forced farmers to reconsider their nitrogen fertilizer usage, favoring legumes such as soybeans, which require less nitrogen fertilizer than corn and wheat. Ammonium nitrate is one of two main sources of nitrogen fertilizer, with the other main source of nitrogen being derived from urea.

“Additional demand has arisen on the domestic market for ammonium nitrate from both agricultural producers and industrial businesses,” Russia’s Ministry of Agriculture said in a statement released late Feb. 1 on its website. It said that the warm winter in southern Russia had brought forward spring sowing by several weeks and so stimulated demand for nitrogen fertilizers.

It is unclear what the effect of this news will have on further increases in fertilizer prices. However, one source importing European fertilizer to the UK said Feb. 2 that the news “had already been in the pipeline, and [AN] stocks have been built, certainly in the UK.”

Russia represents around two thirds of the world’s annual 20 million mt ammonium nitrate production, most of which is used in fertilizers to improve yields for crops such as corn, cotton and wheat.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations expects total nitrogen fertilizer production to be around 190 million mt in 2022, according to its most recent market outlook published in 2019. Non-nitrogen fertilizers can also be produced from phosphoric acid and potash, and the FAO put production of those two substances at 64 million mt and 65 million mt, respectively.

Texas Freeze Creates Global Plastics Shortage

March 24, 2021

Texas Freeze Creates Global Plastics Shortage

First, it was a demand slump across pretty much every manufacturing industry because of the pandemic. Then a surge in demand for electronics caused a shortage of microchips, which hit the automotive industry particularly hard. Now, the Texas Freeze has caused a global shortage of plastics. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the cold spell that shut down oil fields and refineries in Texas is still affecting operations, with several petrochemical plants on the Gulf Coast remaining closed a month after the end of the crisis. This creates a shortage of essential raw materials for a range of industries, from car making to medical consumables and even house building.

The WSJ report mentions carmakers Honda and Toyota as two companies that would need to start cutting output because of the plastics shortage, which came on top of an already pressing shortage of microchips. Ford, meanwhile, is cutting shifts because of the chip shortage and building some models only partially. GM, on the other hand, has started building some pickup trucks without a fuel management module because of the shortages, which will affect the fuel economy performance of these cars.

Yet, the automaking industry is just one victim of the abnormal circumstances on the planet and the Gulf Coast. Another is the construction industry. The WSJ reports, citing industry insiders, that following the petrochemical shutdowns, builders are bracing for shortages of everything from siding to insulation.

More than 60 percent of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production capacity in the United States is still out of operation a month after the Texas Freeze, Bloomberg reported earlier this month….

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

THE GREEN ELECTRIC CAR MYTH: 772 Pounds Of Petro-Chemical Plastics In Each Vehicle

July 17, 2020

THE GREEN ELECTRIC CAR MYTH: 772 Pounds Of Petro-Chemical Plastics In Each Vehicle

How can an electric car be called “Green” when it contains more than 700 pounds of plastic??  Electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers are using more plastic to lower the weight of the car due to the massive battery used, weighing more than 1,000 pounds.  Unfortunately, plastic is still made from petrochemicals, the so-called “Dirty Fossil-fuel Industry.”

So, without petrochemicals, the manufacture of electric cars would be extremely difficult without plastic.  And the primary feedstock for plastic is natural gas liquids (NGLs).  Due to the rapid rise in NGLs production, especially in the United States, plastic production has surged.  We can see in the chart below, that the United States accounted for nearly 90% of global NGLs production growth since 2007.

So, with all this extra NGLs production, the United States has a monopoly on the Global NGLs Feedstock for going GREEN.  Of the 3.8 million barrels per day (mbd) of NGLs global production growth since 2007, the United States added 3.4 mbd of that total.

In tearing apart the “Green Electric Vehicle Myth,” I will focus this article only on the plastic component.

There seems to be this notion that cars manufactured 50 years ago were much heavier than vehicles today due to a higher percentage of metals used.  This turns out to be false when we look at the data.  According to an Autoweek article by Murliee Martin titled, 50 years of car weight gain: from the Chevelle to the Sonic, the Fairlane to the Focus, a 1967 mid-sized Chevy Chevelle weighed in at 2,915 pounds versus a 2,955 pounds for a 2017 Chevy Sonic subcompact car:

(image courtesy of Autoweek.com, General Motors & Pinterest)

Looks are deceiving… eh?  If you read the article linked above, the 1967 Chevy Chevelle with all that metal and very little plastic actually weighed 40 pounds less than the subcompact 2017 Chevy Sonic.  Go figure…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Visualizing How Much Oil Is In An Electric Vehicle?

May 26, 2019

Visualizing How Much Oil Is In An Electric Vehicle?

When most people think about oil and natural gas, the first thing that comes to mind is the gas in the tank of their car. But, as Visual Capitalist’s Nicholas LePan notes, there is actually much more to oil’s role, than meets the eye…

Oil, along with natural gas, has hundreds of different uses in a modern vehicle through petrochemicals.

Today’s infographic comes to us from American Fuel & Petrochemicals Manufacturers, and covers why oil is a critical material in making the EV revolution possible.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry

October 29, 2018

A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry

Petrochemical plant in Saudi Arabia

The shale gas industry has been trying to build demand for fossil fuels from its fracked oil and gas wells by promoting the construction of a new petrochemical corridor in America’s Rust Belt and expanding the corridor on the Gulf Coast. To help demystify terms like “natural gas liquids” and “cracker plants,” DeSmog has begun building a guide to some of the equipment and terms used in the plastics and petrochemical industries.

This guide, which will expand over time, is intended to serve as an informal glossary of sorts and an introduction to what happens to fossil fuels that are transformed into chemicals, plastics, vinyl, Styrofoam and a variety of other materials.

Petrochemical Production and the Climate

Fracking for Plastics
This field guide is part of Fracking for Plastics, a DeSmog investigation into the proposed petrochemical build-out in the Rust Belt and the major players involved, along with the environmental, health, and socio-economic implications.

These fossil fuels have a significant global warming impact of their own. The methane leaks associated with the natural gas drilling and distribution industry are so pronounced that many experts say burning natural gas for electricity is worse for the climate than burning coal.

While hydrocarbons that are used as raw materials for petrochemical products aren’t burned (and therefore don’t release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere), that leaky infrastructure still results in methane pollution. Methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, capable of warming the climate about 86 times faster than an equal amount of carbon dioxide during the first decade after it’s released to the atmosphere.

Making petrochemicals also requires a huge amount of energy — some of the largest petrochemical plants like crackers may have their own power plants on site — and that energy comes from burning fossil fuels.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Next Pillar Of Oil Demand Growth

October 8, 2018

The Next Pillar Of Oil Demand Growth

Petchem plant

The debate about peak oil demand always tends to focus on how quickly electric vehicles will replace the internal-combustion engine, especially as EV sales are accelerating. However, the petrochemical sector will be much more difficult to dislodge, and with alternatives far behind, petrochemicals will account for an increasing share of crude oil demand growth in the years ahead.

Petrochemicals don’t receive much attention in the media, but its fingerprints are everywhere. They are used in plastics, fertilizers, packaging, clothing, dyes, cleaning products, cosmetics, medicines, tires – a seemingly limitless number of end-uses. They are so ingrained and embedded into modern life that they are almost unnoticeable.

Producing the zillions of consumer and industrial products coming from petrochemicals requires huge volumes of feedstocks. Needless to say, as the name suggests, the feedstocks are derived from petroleum – oil and gas. Moreover, demand for petrochemicals is soaring, as hundreds of millions of people in emerging markets move into the middle class.

A new report from the International Energy Agency positions the petrochemical industry as one of the driving forces behind oil demand growth for the next few decades. “The growing role of petrochemicals is one of the key ‘blind spots’ in the global energy debate,” the IEA wrote. “The diversity and complexity of this sector means that petrochemicals receive less attention than other sectors, despite their rising importance.”

The IEA says that the petrochemical sector could account for more than a third of oil demand growth to 2030, and nearly half to 2050, “ahead of trucks, aviation and shipping.” Passenger vehicles are currently a major source of oil demand, but they will “diminish in importance thanks to a combination of better fuel economy, rising public transit, alternative fuels, and electrification.”

But petrochemicals are much more interwoven into modern life, and the alternatives are far less developed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Emissions From Gulf Coast’s New Petrochemical, Oil and Gas Projects Same as 29 New Coal Power Plants

September 28, 2018

Climate Emissions From Gulf Coast’s New Petrochemical, Oil and Gas Projects Same as 29 New Coal Power Plants

Petrochemical plant in the Houston Ship Canal

In the last six years, officials in Texas and Louisiana issued permits allowing 74 petrochemical, oil, and gas projects to pump as much climate-warming pollution into the atmosphere as running 29 coal-fired power plants around the clock, according to numbers released September 26 by the nonprofit watchdog Environmental Integrity Project.

And construction appears to be speeding up, with over 40 percent of those projects permitted between 2016 and mid-2018. The 31 most recent projects combined will add 50 million tons of greenhouse gases — equal to 11 new coal-fired power plants — to the world’s atmosphere in a year, the watchdog adds.

Environmentalists pointed to the risks that climate change poses to Gulf Coast states, where these projects are being built, and noted that the greenhouse effect has already led to sea level rise and a higher risk of extreme storms.

“Louisiana is already sinking into the Gulf of Mexico, and yet our state government is permitting more of the emissions that cause flooding and storms,” Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said in a statement accompanying the numbers. “It’s mind boggling.”

The most recent projects tallied by the group include seven Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plants or terminals, 15 chemical and plastic resin plants, five petroleum refineries, and two natural gas processing plants, as well as a fertilizer manufacturer and hydrogen plant, all in Texas and Louisiana.

Looking North

The count does not include plants outside the Gulf Coast, like the Marcellus shale region of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, where a glut of natural gas liquids (NGLs) like ethane, a petrochemical feedstock produced by many shale wells, is attracting attention from plastics and chemical manufacturers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Erasing Mossville: How Pollution Killed a Louisiana Town

November 5, 2015

Erasing Mossville: How Pollution Killed a Louisiana Town

ALLEN LEBLANC LED A VIGOROUS LIFE as a young man growing up in Mossville, Louisiana. He had a sheet-rocking business, drove trucks, and worked at the Conoco oil refinery. He helped his mother and stepfather run their nightclub, where Tina Turner and James Brown used to play. He also helped out at home with his five children, and he would paint, fix broken windows, and mow lawns for neighbors who couldn’t afford to maintain their houses. Now, at 71, LeBlanc is on disability, and for most of the last decade he has refused to leave his house. Seizures, liver problems, a stroke, tremors, insomnia, fatigue, and depression plague him. He can no longer drive, and he can’t walk from his front door to the sidewalk without collapsing.

Allen LeBlanc sits on his front porch in Mossville, La., Oct. 22, 2015.

Allen LeBlanc sits on his front porch in Mossville, La., Oct. 22, 2015.

LeBlanc attributes his debilitation not to heredity or unhealthy habits but to the toxic emissions from industrial plants that have proliferated in the neighboring town of Westlake. Just beyond the curtain of pines and cypress trees surrounding Mossville sits an oil refinery, several petrochemical plants, and one of the country’s largest concentrations of manufacturers of vinyl chloride, a main ingredient in polyvinyl chloride, the plastic known as PVC. As a matter of course — and most often within permitted levels — these facilities emit millions of pounds of toxins into the air, water, and soil each year. “Living here has messed me up,” LeBlanc said. Although his appearance was disheveled, he spoke clearly and coherently, upright in his chair. “If I could have another life, I’d take it. This one ain’t worth 10 cents to me,” he said in his thick Louisiana drawl. “I’d like to do things for myself again — I’d give everything I’ve got for that.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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