Expert sees EU sanctions on low-tonnage chemicals as a risk to operation of Russian petrochemical cos
MOSCOW. April 26 (Interfax) - European Union sanctions have cut off supplies to Russia of 3,500 to 5,000 low-tonnage chemical products needed for the current operations of petrochemical companies, the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Petrochemical Synthesis Institute, Anton Maksimov said.
"The situation is fairly difficult and related not to the functioning of existing plants in general, not with production of certain fuel components, but with sustaining current operations. The number of low-tonnage chemical products [...] prohibited from import, according to the estimates of a number of oil companies, amounts to 3,500-5,000, and they are used directly in the current operating process," Maksimov said at a roundtable on the development of low-tonnage industrial chemistry organized at the Federation Council.
The sanctions have affected a large number of support reagents, he said. "For oil refining operations, it's foremost demulsifiers, for all production it's reagents for treatment of water - they are all foreign, it's cations and anions that are not made in Russia, it's anticorrosion and biocide additives [...]. And it's actually a large number of products that can be called lubricants in general - compressor oils, oils for pumps, lubricating materials, power fluids," Maksimov said.
He said that virtually all technologies that were installed at large-tonnage plants in Russia included foreign equipment and, accordingly, were serviced with foreign low-tonnage chemicals.
A second problem is related to production of end products, such as fuel and lubricants.
"We don't actually use the fractions that come out of units, we use fuel blended with agents, additives that ensure the performance characteristics that are necessary for the equipment we use. And here it turns out that some of the agents and additives are not made in Russia or made by methods of, as I call it, blending, when components come from completely different countries for a number of agents. Foremost, of course, these are depressants and suspension additives," Maksimov said.
Problems can also arise in production of chemical plastics and materials made from plastics.
"Nobody needs simple polyethylene in standard form. We need the end product, the production of which uses certain additives, and we need the product in which these additives are included. A simple example is antipyrenes, dyes, stabilizers. As a rule, these additives amount to tenths of a percent of what we produce, but without these additives it's simply pointless to produce this end product," Maksimov said.
Russia has reserves of reagents and additives for up to six months and it can also offset some of the losses thanks to Chinese suppliers, he said. "But it is necessary here and now to highlight those critical products that are critical for several sectors, not just companies, at once," Maksimov said.