Revisited: Pequiven investment plans

It is interesting to look back and see previous posts. By now, more than 2 million tpa of polymer production could be already online in Venezuela, but all these projects, to my knowledge have been killed.

What is even more interesting that most of this projects if built would have been an economic disaster, since the shale gas revolution on the us has reduced the margins for Naphtha feed crackers.

Even the giant of the south, Petrobras/Braskem is not having a better picture:

Millions of dollars were allegedly creamed off inflated contracts for the Abreu e Lima refinery being built near Recife in Northeast Brazil. The refinery is to start operating in November, three years late. Its cost has ballooned.
A second Petrobras refinery project — Comperj, near Rio — is four years behind schedule, double the projected cost and delayed by strikes

In a next series of post I will talk about the investment options available for the venezuelan and latinamerican petrochemical industry.

Pequiven new investment plan for 2013-2017

Image source

Once again, Pequiven has been on the news announcing the investment plan for the national petrochemical industry. The investment aims to increase the olefin production more than 100%, and it will be built in the Ana Maria Campos complex, located on the west part of the country.

More information have been released about the scope of the project, regarding which plants are planned to be built and its capacities.

- Bi-oriented Polypropylene, capacity of 37 kta.
- PET, capacity 240 kta.
- Polypropylene, capacity 460 kta.

Another interesting fact for me is that the demand for plastic resins has increase more than 100% in the last year, thus increasing the imports of raw materials for the plastic converters/consumers.

As soon as more information becomes available, I will try to keep the blog updated with the latest development and also centralizing the venezuelan petrochemical information to this blog.

Pequiven 5 years investment plan

Image source


In the last few days there have been a lot of movements around Venezuela and Pequiven. At the end of the 3rd quarter of the year, during the annual AVIPLA conference PEQUIVEN CEO, Saul Ameliach gave a speech about the status of the latest investment planned in polymers and petrochemicals in Venezuela.

Also some information have appeared in the national an international press, about the PEQUIVEN investment plan for the 2013 - 2017 period. Basically, I read mostly about an upgrade over the fertilizant units in the Moron complex (with an interesting remark from the Planning Chief of the complex "The plants in the Moron complex are falling appart").

Regarding the most interesting topic (at least for this blog), the polymer production and capacity addition these are the news:

- Increase PE and PP production to 600kta and PVC production to around 400 kta.

These are great news, but sadfully already with 5 years of delay, when I started this blog all these new capacity additions should have come online by 2013, but it will happen 4 years later. Demand of the polymer has already surpass the country capacity and these investments are necessary to catch up with the demand.

Some other interesting information I have found while some short research which emphasizes the consequences of delay investments in the polymer production area. The info is given by Jose Perez a PEQUIVEN director, during the same AVIPLA Congress:

"Currently PEQUIVEN sells around 690kta of polymers, from that, around 16% (110kta) are imported. For 2016 PEQUIVEN expects to sell around 1000kta of polymers, without any significant production increase and new demand will be covered by an increase of imports".

So in short, in Venezuela, it is not about exports, it is not about being trapped in a international economic crisis, or waiting to invest in the upturn of a cyclical market, is simply about not being able to supply enough materials due to lack of investment.

@PequivenNoticia, or How not to do it in Twitter

Ever since I started this blog, I have been looking for news about the petrochemical activities in Venezuela. Generally it will be enough to check the website of the company and a couple of news agencies. For Pequiven, there was virtually no information available about the new projects and their development.

With the arrival of @ChavezCandanga, and a lot of new twitter accounts, I expected to see an increase of the amount of information available about Pequiven and the new projects. Sadfully, this has not occurred.

Then, an official twitter account of Pequiven arrived, called @PequivenNoticia, I had very high hopes on this account and the information it could generate. But the information shared is not very relevant, and it falls into repetition. And when I say repetition I mean the following

And also


So, this kind of approach only encourage me to keep surfing the web for that latest contract issued by Pequiven, that new technology licensed. To keep to myself and to whomever might endup in this blog with relevant information about Pequiven and petrochemical activities in Venezuela.

Pequiven new investments. Petrocasas

Image source

The latest months have been very quiet. The shadow of a new economic crisis is covering most of the developed economies, and serious doubts about China continuous growth model are arising.

The latests news show that most of the investment (financed by Chinese development fund) are still half way. And no mention to petrochemical plants.

For the Petrocasas proyect, the promise is 20.000 new houses will be available for new year. I will be quite suspicious with this figure, given that the original project target was up to 15.000 houses. Even more, to produce 20.000 houses will require more than 30% of all national PVC production!

Finally to conclude, there are some news about Pequiven expanding its resins production capacity from around 500kta to 2000kta. The catch: new production will be in line in 2016. That is 2 years more than reported 10 months ago...

Polinter 1000 kta Ethylene Plant

I was checking Pequiven's website to get some reference about the new projects to be done in the 2007-2013 period. From the website it states the construction of a 1000 kta Ethylene Plant, but no more information about it.

Doing some research I found out that Linde Group is in charge of buidling the Ethylene Plant, and it has a very nice graph about it.


Remarkably, it set the completion date in 2015. So it is good news! we have a date!. Moreover, in the same presentation there is a sheet of typical cost of a Ethylene plant, very useful information for quick comparison and calculations.



This information was given in Linde's Olefin Academy presentation

The Caracas Chronicles Effect

The other day I was quite happy to be mentioned in one of my favorites blogs "Caracas Chronicles", mostly because I started this blog after being an avid reader of their own.

However, as the Dutch saying "Meten is weten" (To measure is to know), I want to show the impact of being referenced in Caracas Chronicles in my normal traffic.

As you can see in the graph above, it increased 20-fold the amount of people who get into my blog, having 60 visitors in one day! Hehe still way to go, but it is a very good motivation to keep working, and keep organizing the information available about petrochemical activities in Venezuela.

More posts to come!