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ExxonMobil says in talks to
buy Singapore's Jurong Aromatics
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 [April 05, 2017]
By Florence Tan and Seng Li Peng
SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - ExxonMobil said on Wednesday it is in talks to buy a
refining-petrochemical complex in Singapore that could boost its fuel
and chemical production in Asia.
"We can confirm that we are currently negotiating with the receiver for
Jurong Aromatics Corporation Pte Ltd to acquire JAC's assets on Jurong
Island," an ExxonMobil spokeswoman said.
"While progress is being made, no agreement has been reached yet," she
said.
The U.S. oil company is the frontrunner to buy JAC which went into
receivership in September 2015, Thomson Reuters publication Project
Finance International reported on Tuesday.
Borelli Walsh had been appointed the receivers and managers of JAC by
lender BNP Paribas. Lotte Chemical Corp said in March that it had
dropped out of the race to buy JAC.
Costing $2.4 billion, JAC's condensate splitter and petrochemical units
started operations in Asia in 2014 to produce paraxylene, a raw material
for textiles and bottles, to meet China's demand.
Singapore is already ExxonMobil's biggest paraxylene production base in
the world at 1 million tonnes per year (tpy), according to its 2016
annual report. The proposed JAC acquisition will boost ExxonMobil's
paraxylene capacity to 1.8 million tpy and add another 2.5 million tpy
of oil products output.
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Logos of ExxonMobil are seen in its booth at Gastech, the world's
biggest expo for the gas industry, in Chiba, Japan April 4, 2017.
REUTERS/Toru Hanai
JAC's
debt problems mounted amid the global commodities rout and it stopped operations
at the end of 2014 to fix a technical issue. The plant was restarted in July
2016 under tolling agreements with BP and Glencore .
Once the deal is inked, ExxonMobil could take over the purchase of condensate
for JAC from July, trade sources said.
(Reporting by Florence Tan and Seng Li Peng in SINGAPORE, and Jane Chung in
SEOUL; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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