'Big Oil' taps into the chemical growth markets of Asia–Pacific: Exxon Mobil has doubled the production capacity of its Singapore plant in the largest chemical expansion project in the company’s history.

Chevron Phillips Chemical’s new world-scale unit has broken ground in Old Ocean, Texas, USA. The 266 KTA plant will make use of the company’s proprietary on-purpose 1-hexene technology to produce exceptional purity comonomer grade 1-hexene from ethylene in order to expand its alpha olefins business.

The specialised technology will be used for Hanwha Total Petrochemical’s new PP production facility in Daesan, South Korea. The facility is expected to commence operations in 2021.

Toyo Engineering India has secured an EPCC contract from Performance Chemiserve for an ammonia plant project along with associated offsite and utility facilities in Navi Mumbai, India. The plant is expected to be complete by 2023.

Toyo India has been awarded an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Contract (EPC) to build a new multi-business chemical production site for BASF India at the Dahej Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR), located in Dahej.

EuroChem announced that its Kazakhstan subsidiary has signed a Memorandum of Understanding and Partnership with the Ministry of Investments and Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Akimat of the Jambyl Region of Southern Kazakhstan.

Jacobs Engineering Group received a multi-year contract from Olin Corporation.

Stringent conditions for biogas plant operators underline the need for innovative management systems. Moreover, economic efficiency is becoming increasingly important. Now software manufacturers introduce comprehensive application in order to enable technically reliable, profitable operation, especially for biogas plants.

Is the time of optimism over? The chemical industry of crisis struck Europe announces a slight but significant output drop of 2.1 percent through first five months of 2012. The figures for May 2012 indicate that production levels are 0.7 percent below May 2011 level, industry association Cefic says.

On Day 1 of Achema Pulse, a session was held on ‘Modular Production: Transforming the Process Industry with BioPhorum (global) and ICES, AA*STAR (Singapore)’. Gabriel Loh, Team Leader at the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences in Singapore and Clare Simpson, Technology Roadmapping Phorum Lead at Bio Phorum presented their views on the activities in the biopharmaceutical sector by BioPhorum and the research activities in Singapore by A*STAR.