January 2021

Check out what five informed market-watchers predict will be the top oil and gas industry trends in 2021.

Wood Mackenzie expects coronavirus related shutdowns to start easing in the first quarter of next year and that the company is forecasting a world oil demand increase of 6.6 million barrels per day, year on year, in 2021.

Shanghai Daily

Specialty chemicals company LANXESS achieved another milestone in the construction of its new Asia Pacific Application Development Center (AADC) as the building was handed over to the company on December 15.

Filtration + Separation

Suez has completed the purchase of the reverse osmosis (RO) membrane product line from specialty chemical company Lanxess.

BiofuelsDigest

Solvay has begun a process of decarbonizing the cyclopentanone unit of its Melle plant in France. Through an agreement with an agricultural cooperative for the next fifteen years, the entire cyclopentanone production already relies solely on biomethane gas, a green source of energy.

Forbes

In Japan, mobile street food stands are the epitome of highly agile and customized production, making them an unlikely but apt model for manufacturers facing fast-changing markets.

Cambodia has begun extracting its first crude oil from fields in the Gulf of Thailand, in a venture between Singapore’s KrisEnergy Ltd and the government, both parties said on Tuesday, bringing an end to years of delays.

Platts reports that it expects China and the Philippines to be key drivers for increased ethanol demand in the global market next year. Impacts from COVID-19 have forced the Philippines to reduce its requirement for domestic ethanol blending and in turn boost imports to cover its ethanol blending mandate.

Reuters reports the palm oil association plans to ask the government to review its new export levy policy if prices continue along their meteoric rise. With palm oil prices trading around $950.81 per metric ton, near 10-year highs, the feedstock makes biodiesel blending increase unviable in both Indonesia and Malaysia where governments planned to absorb palm oil stocks with higher blending mandates.

Companies delayed or even pulled out of several multimillion dollar projects last year, including projects to develop metal smelters, oil and gas fields, power plants and oil refineries.

The government is delaying its B20 biodiesel mandate by six months, with the fuel now expected to roll out nationwide in early 2022.

Malaysia’s palm oil and palm products exports are expected to surpass the RM70 billion target in 2020, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Datuk Dr Mohd Khairuddin Aman Razali said.

Myanmar has approved the development of an Integrated Domestic Gas to Power Project involving US$2 billion in investments in Kyaiklat, Ayeyarwady Region. The Ministry of Electricity and Energy granted a Notice to Proceed to Thai national oil company PTTEP for the 592-megawatt project, which will be carried out under a 20-year Build, Operate and Transfer basis.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered a halt to all mining on an island in a southern province that is home to some of the country’s nickel projects

THE Philippines should not limit itself to vaccines in fighting the pandemic, but also tap the locally-available virgin coconut oil (VCO) as an effective therapy against Covid-19, an advocate of the substance said.

Construction of the expanded Hoa Binh hydropower plant began in the northern mountainous province of Hoa Binh on January 10, with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc attending the ground-breaking ceremony.

When the Japanese energy firm Inpex in November settled a four-year legal battle against a Singaporean firm to retain its oil and gas concession with Vietnam in the South China Sea, it won the rights to drill in some of the world’s most fraught offsho.