-ExxonMobil will begin a sales allocation for some grades of polypropylene due to operational difficulties at its Baton Rouge, La., polyolefins plant, Platts reports. It was not clear what the difficulties were, and ExxonMobil did not provide a time frame for the allocation. Earlier this week the company blamed a power outage for a Sunday flaring incident at the Baton Rouge plant in which it exceeded Louisiana's reportable quantity for ethane.
-Apache Corp. is seeking more than $2.5 billion for certain oil and natural gas assets in the Texas panhandle and western Oklahoma, Reuters reports. An Apache spokesman declined to comment on a potential transaction. Apache has divested a number of assets in recent months and pulled out of its Kitimat LNG partnership with Chevron in July.
-Tesoro Logistics completed the $28.6 million acquisition of Tesoro Alaska Pipeline Co. The acquired firm owns a 70-mile refined products pipeline linking Tesoro Logistics’ Anchorage, Alaska, storage facility to Tesoro’s Kenai, Alaska, refinery.
-Baker Hughes became the first major oilfield service company to reveal all the chemicals it uses in fracking. Via FuelFix, the company began uploading the information to FracFocus.org this week. Baker Hughes spent six months negotiating with its suppliers to reveal the chemicals.
-As Europe’s refining sector continues to struggle, oil traders are increasingly buying up failing facilities to try to turn a profit. Via Bloomberg, the International Energy Agency foresees the potential emergence of European “zombie” refineries that increase output when margins surge and keep run rates low at other times. Traders, however, have yet to prove they can run refineries at a profit, a researcher at Energy Aspects said.
