The Chemical World This Week INDUSTRY & BUSINESS
MAY 6,
1963
CONCENTRATES
• The Soviet Union has signed orders for more than $73 million worth of British chemical plants. Simon-Carves received a $56 million con tract to design and supply six polyethylene plants. Part of the $56 million will go to Imperial Chem ical Industries for use of its high-pressure poly ethylene process. Humphreys & Glasgow, Ltd., won a $17 million contract for two ethylene plants plus a $500,000 contract for a phosphorus pentasulfide plant. Each of the ethylene plants will have a capacity of 60,000 tons a year. The poly ethylene plants will have an annual capacity of 24,000 tons each and will be built at four loca tions not yet specified. The Soviet Union's total polyethylene capacity when the plants come on stream late in 1966 will be about 170,000 tons compared with its present capacity of 20,000 to 40,000 tons. The contracts are the result of a trade visit to England by the Soviet organization Techmashimport ( C&EN, April 22, page 19). • Trade sources say that Shell Chemical is mov ing into the oxo chemical business* The com pany is one of only two producers (the other is Enjay) in the U.S. of sec-butyl alcohol and the only U.S. producer of tertAyntyl alcohol. Now trade sources report Shell salesmen are soliciting orders for η-butyl alcohol, and Shell will make it by an oxo reaction route that is not typical. Shell Chemical will neither confirm nor deny the reports. • The second fatal explosion in less than two years ripped through Hercules-operated Alle gany Ballistics Laboratory near Cumberland, Md., killing three technical operators and injuring 10 other plant personnel. Owned by the Navy, ABL is engaged primarily in solid rocket propellant research and development. Its biggest project currently is development of the second stage of the new, 2500-mile-range A-3 model Polaris missile. The blast occurred in a rocket processing building where liquid plasticizer (ni troglycerine, principally) is added to granular material to consolidate the propellant and to bond it to the motor casing. Double-base propellants produced by Hercules Powder consist mainly of powdered aluminum and ammonium perchlorate in a nitrocellulose-nitroglycerine matrix. An in quiry has been launched to try to determine the cause of the explosion, but officials fear that all clues were destroyed. In May 1961, nine persons were killed in an explosion which leveled three buildings at the installation.
• Allied Chemical has bought Texas Gas Corp.'s petrochemical plant at Winnie, Tex. The Texas plant will enable Allied to revise and limit its building plans for its Geismar, La., complex, president Chester M. Brown told the company's annual meeting. The Geismar petrochemical complex was originally planned to make both aromatics and olefins. Now, however, the Geis mar plant may make only olefins. The Winnie plant now produces light hydrocarbons and gasoline. • Cities Service's plan to acquire Tennessee Corp. may be moving toward completion· Cities Service board chairman Burl S. Watson says that after several meetings with Department of Justice representatives, it now appears that questions raised by the Government concerning the move may be resolved on a mutually satis factory basis. Justice officials claimed the acqui sition raised serious legal questions under the antitrust laws and had considered starting legal proceedings to stop the merger ( C&EN, Feb. 25, page 19). The proposed merger is now tenta tively scheduled for completion on June 4. • Royal Dutch/Shell may get involved in an American labor dispute. The Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers International Union says it will seek action by the management overseas. The 2200 members of local 4-367 at Shell Oil's refinery and at Shell Chemical's plant at Deer Park, Tex., have been on strike since last August (C&EN, Aug. 27, 1962, page 17). Nonunion employees are still operating the Deer Park facili ties (C&EN, Sept. 3, 1962, Part 1, page 21). Unionists from the Netherlands, Trinidad, Cura cao, and Venezuela attended meetings in Houston and Pasadena, Tex., last week to plan future action against the parent concern. The union also plans to picket the British and the Nether lands consulates in Houston. ί A U.S. District Court judge in Wilmington, Del., dismissed a U.S. Justice Department anti trust complaint against Penn-Olin, the joint ven ture of Olin Mathieson and Pennsalt Chemicals set up in 1960. The complaint, filed in early 1961, sought to stop Penn-Olin from building a sodium chlorate plant at Calvert City, Ky., and selling the product. U.S. District Judge, E. D. Steel, Jr., said that the joint venture did not constitute an unreasonable restraint of trade in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. MAY
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