Ineos this morning announced it was permanently closing its Grangemouth petrochemical plant in Scotland.
Following direct negotiations with its employees over the weekend, Ineos said that half of its staff had rejected its survival plan for the complex, which includedproposals to scrap the site’s final salary pension scheme.Read more…
Advice for Offshore operators and employers on the need for Offshore Ex inspections and maintenance of Offshore Ex equipment and in particular the need for relamping of Ex luminaires in line with manufacturers’ recommendations. This followed several incidents of overheating, component meltdown, and internal explosions of luminaires installed in Offshore hazardous areas. (more…)
The Energy Institute (EI)’s new Power Utility Committee (PUC) is developing a safety work programme to increase safety at work on power generation sites. The EI is has announced the appointment of global management consultancy, Oliver Wyman, to lead an industry-wide initiative drawing together a snapshot of commercial best practice.
The EI’s Power Generation Industry Contractor Engagement programme will seek to capture good safety practice from projects and working arrangements, improving the safety approaches across the industry, and incorporate lessons learnt from previous incidents. (more…)
UK government adviser John Large says Chinese firms are rooted in state system without independent safety regulators.
One of Britain’s leading nuclear engineering consultants has raised serious concerns about the safety implications of handing over some of Britain’s nuclear plants to Chinese operators. (more…)
BP PLC has started up a 250,000-b/d crude distillation unit at its Whiting, Ind., refinery. USA
The BP unit will result in the Whiting refinery returning to its 413,000-b/d nameplate processing capability and clears the way for remaining upgrades of new coking and hydrotreating units, the company said (OGJ Online, Feb. 1, 2011). (more…)
Total will use KBR’s proprietary ROSE solvent deasphalting technology in its upgrade of the 338,000-b/d refinery at Antwerp, Belgium (OGJ Online, May 23, 2013).
The ROSE unit, due on stream in early 2016, will split 48,000 b/sd of residue from a mix of crude oils into deasphalted oil and asphaltene. (more…)
A turnkey contract has been awarded covering the addition of a delayed coker at the Chennai Petroleum Corp. Ltd. 10.5 million tonne/year Manali refinery in Tamil Nadu, India.
According to press reports, the coker will have capacity of 2.2 million tpy. (more…)
Shell report New forecasts which indicate possible societal and energy trends over next 50 years
With the world’s population headed toward 9 billion at mid-century and millions of people climbing out of poverty, global energy demand could increase by as much as 80% by 2050, according to a new report from Shell. The report, New Lens Scenarios, looks much further into the future than most similar reports.
Shell’s futurologists envision two possible scenarios, covering trends in the economy, politics and energy over the next half a century, with dramatically different implications for society and the world’s energy system. (more…)
A fuel tanker explosion in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has killed 31 people and left at least 20 others injured, police said. The accident happened on June 29 on the outskirts of Kampala after the tanker collided with a car. According to the semi-independent Daily Monitor newspaper, the fuel spilled from the tanker onto the road and ignited.
Some reports said the majority of the victims were trying to siphon fuel from the damaged tanker when the fuel ignited. (more…)
Britain could face power shortages towards the middle of the decade, UK energy regulator Ofgem has stated, with spare electricity power production capacity falling as low as 2% by 2015. Ofgem said that the risk of blackouts that year has trebled from the one-in-12 it estimated in October to just one-in-four, if energy demand remains at current levels.
Ministers are trying to encourage companies to spend more than £100 billion on new green energy infrastructure by offering huge subsidies. However, the new power stations will not have arrived in time to avert the possible squeeze in 2015.
Ofgem says that no new gas-fired power plants are expected until 2016 and it expects the equivalent of just one to start generating before the end of the decade. (more…)
