Berkshire Hathaway Acquired Lubrizol

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has acquired Lubrizol for $9.7 Billion or $135/share in an all-cash transaction. The transaction includes $700 million in debt of the lubricant business company. There is only four well-known detergent companies globally with the recent fifth coming from China. The move is seen as Warren's new agenda towards the energy market.

Pertamina Collaborating with Petronas & Total for Natuna Project

Indonesian state oil and gas company PT Pertamina will be in collaboration with Malaysia’s Petronas and France’s Total SA for East Natuna project in Indonesia waters. This comes amids Pertamina inking agreement with ExxonMobil earlier.

Pertamina is looking for collaboration both for investment and technology provider such as one in regards to high CO2 content in the oil field.

Saudi Aramco to Increase Gulf Chemical Production to $80 Billion

Saudi Aramco in its statement says that they would want to increase the chemical production in the Gulf to $80 Billion by 2020. Saudi Aramco is targeting to increase from the current chemical industry from $40 billion to $50 billion in per-annum revenue.

The expected revenue is likely to come from Saudi's Wasit gas plant, expected to commission in 2013, UAE's Borouge, tripling capacity to 4.5 million tonnes per annum by the end of 2013, and nine new crackers and downstream plants in the Gulf by 2015.

Shell Expanding its Saudi Arabia Sadaf JV

Shell is conducting a study for its Saudi Arabia joint venture, Sadaf with SABIC for expansion of capacity under the provision of enough and reliable feedstock supply from its partner. The expansion will be looking specifically for additional capacity of polyurethanes (PU), polyols and alpha-olefins even though the Sadaf JV also produces ethylene, crude industrial ethanol, styrene, caustic soda, ethylene dichloride and methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE).

Saudi Aramco Launching New Petchem Products Through JVs

Saudi Aramco which has joint venture projects with Japan's Sumitomo Chemicals and Dow Chemicals is expected to introduce petchem products higher in the value chain including metallocene-based elastomers, glycol ethers, methyl methacrylate (MMA), polymethyl metaacrylate (PMMA), nylon and EP rubber. This comes as Phase II expansion of PetroRabigh is expected to commence which currently produces 1.3 million tonne per year of ethane cracker and 700,000 tonne per year of MEG.

Engen Petroleum Ltd Acquired Chevron Corp.'s assets in Africa

Malaysian Stateoil Petronas subsidiary, Engen Petroleum Ltd. has just reportedly completed acquisition of Chevron assets in Malawi, Zambia and the French territory of Reunion. Engen Petroleum which operates South Africa’s largest fuel retailer is also in stage of getting regulatory approval to buy Chevron’s assets in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania and Mauritius in 2011.

India to Build New 450,000 tonne/year Ethylene Plant

India is building a new 450,000 tonne per year of ethylene plant in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state. The project which is owned by GAIL, will be using technology and engineering services from Shaw Group under EPCC.