The Chemical World This Week INDUSTRY & BUSINESS
JULY
6,
1964
CONCENTRATES
• A struggle is in the offing to take over Pure Oil. The firm (see page 27) has received a sec ond offer from a group headed by Laird and Co., Wilmington, Del., and Crichton and Co., Dallas., Tex. The Du Pont family is represented in the group. The new offer would lead to a cash distri bution of at least $65 per share, based on the for mation of a new corporation in which present stockholders of Pure would have a right to partici pate. The new company would own all of Pure's existing assets except the oil and gas producing properties. Earlier, Allied Chemical, Consolida tion Coal, and Carl M. Loeb, Rhoades & Co. offered $700 million for the firm.
Odessa, Tex., and the spinning division for indus trial and heavy-denier yarn would probably be located somewhere in the Tennessee Valley Authority area. Beaunit now has a 10 million pound-per-year nylon 6 plant at Elizabethton, Tenn. • Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing is test marketing Scotchgard in spray cans for home use. Two types of the water and oil repellent are being offered. One is for use on washable fab rics; the other is for furniture fabrics and clothing that are usually dry cleaned. This test program is the first venture into the retail consumer mar ket for 3M's chemical division.
• Future plans for shale oil are firming up:
Oil Shale Corp. (TOSCO) will have a commer cial oil-shale plant in operation 15 miles north of Rifle, Colo., by January 1967, according to TOSCO's president H. I. Koolsbergen, and S. H. Elliott, senior vice president in charge of the oil and gas business for Standard Oil Co. (Ohio), Cleveland. TOSCO will break ground this fall for the 55,000 barrel-per-day plant. Preliminary development and design are under way, Mr. Koolsbergen told his company's stockholders at the annual meeting. He also said TOSCO has developed a new process for extracting oil from shale. The system involves a vertical retort. The plant will be built on land acquired From Dow Chemical in April. Oil Shale Corp. and Standard Oil Co. (Ohio) arc acquiring substantial interests in mineral rights to (S400 more acres of oil-shale reserves. The rights to this parcel in Uintah County, Utah, are now held by Skyline Oil Co. (Salt Lake City). The land is west of the 7500 acres acquired in a joint venture by TOSCO, SOHIO, and Cleve land-Cliffs Iron Co., Cleveland, Ohio, in April (C&EN, April 27, page 28). Mr. Koolsbergen of TOSCO says the company looks forward to the time when crude oil production from shale will start in Utah as well as in western Colorado. • Beaunit Corp. plans to produce nylon 66.
In a
joint venture with El Paso Natural Gas Products the firm plans a 40 million pound-per-year plant. The proposal has been approved by the directors of both companies and now depends on obtaining financing. Cost would be about $50 million. Chemicals for the venture would be made at
ί Ethyl Corp. will begin producing polyvinyl chloride compounds early next year (the firm declines to say, at present, from whom it will buy raw materials for the compounds). A $10 million unit at the company's Baton Rouge, La., complex will also produce PVC resins, beginning in mid1965. Ethyl recently concluded exchange agree ments for PVC process and application technology with three European PVC makers: Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries; Belgium's Solvay & Cie.; and Solvic, a joint ICI-Solvay subsidiary. • Styrene prices continue to skid. Look for the price to drop below 9 cents a pound on an f.o.b., freight-equalized basis, from its present list of 9.5 cents per pound, delivered, which was set in March 1964. Demand for styrene is brisk despite the softness in prices. Last year's production of 2.1 billion pounds was about 88% of the industry's capacity (C&EN, March 30, page 23). Both Amoco and Union Carbide have scheduled new capacity. Construction of Carbide's new 300 mil lion pound-per-year styrene plant at Seadrift, Tex., is complete, and the unit will soon be on stream. Amoco's more than 200 million poundper-year styrene plant is scheduled for start-up in early 1965 (C&EN, Jan. 6, page 14). ί British Hydrocarbon Chemicals, Ltd., will increase its cumene capacity to 115,000 tons a year. The firm will modify its existing cumene unit at Grangemouth, Scotland, and convert its propylene tetramer plant to cumene production. BHC, owned jointly by Distillers Co., Ltd., and British Petroleum, hasn't revealed present cu mene capacity. JULY
6, 1964
C&EN
21
