[By our guest columnist, 'Thiophilos']
Far from being a new topic of conversation, the quality of the various types of formed solid elemental sulphur available on today’s world markets nonetheless remains an important one for a variety of reasons. We live with a market that varies from boom to bust in a short few months, as was seen a couple of years ago. Predictions are for massive oversupply as energy producers drill into higher sulphur content sources of hydrocarbons. Surely competitive advantages such as product quality remain important factors in determining whether your product sells or doesn’t – and how much it sells for?
It used to be that when the market talked quality with respect to bulk solid sulphur it was chemical purity that was in mind; what was the ‘ash’ content? - meaning all the contaminant minerals present that shouldn’t be, or what was the ‘carbon’ content? - focusing on how much hydrocarbon had found its way into the not so bright yellow sulphur for sale. Or trace quantities of arsenic, selenium and tellurium (AST) that weren’t popular with the fertilizer manufacturers that converted it into sulphuric acid for phosphate production. And even the moisture content - great for keeping dust emissions down during handling and transportation but bad news for wet sulphur corrosion of iron-containing vessels that stored or transported the stuff, like marine bulk carriers. And there are more quality offending chemicals on the impurity list.
These impurities are still on the buyers ‘no-no’ list, or at least are reasons for substantial discounts to whatever the market price may be at the time. But with 50 million plus tons of the stuff moving annually through world transportation systems, another important quality feature has emerged in the solid formed version of the yellow element - its physical handling and storage characteristics. How does it respond to rough handling in bulk? Does it crush easily? Do such properties change with time in storage – the ageing process? Is it a big generator of fugitive dust emissions? Are these emissions hazardous with respect to fires, explosions or environmental impact? It is a whole new ball game as far as what is meant by quality of product.
Is this more recent emergence of a different set of quality factors for bulk formed solid elemental sulphur a valid development? It is hardly a new development. For many decades in the twentieth century it was one of the strong arguments in favour of storing and moving elemental sulphur in its liquid form. But this was in the days when sulphur was mined (Frasch) to meet market demand, not as an involuntary by-product of hydrocarbon oil refining. The buyers in those days were also well equipped to receive and handle the hot liquid product, more so than many of today’s developing countries, who import the stuff to make the acid to produce the fertilizer to feed the billions. All this on top of the specialised nature of the heated tankers needed to haul the molten sulphur half way around the world.
So what are the driving forces behind the inclusion of physical handling and storage characteristics in the Quality Factor? From a public relations and social responsibility standpoint it must surely be environmental impact. There is little doubt that if the handling of formed solid elemental sulphur generates significant quantities of fugitive dust particulates, it is hazardous on at least two counts; first the potential for fires and explosions, with all the implied safety and insurance consequences; and second, the ease of aerobic oxidation of the dust to form acid (rain) with all of its negative effects on green and growing matter – animal and vegetable and even mineral.
So what have we been doing about responding to this quality challenge for formed solid elemental sulphur? Quite a lot. A generation ago a whole bunch of world trade solid sulphur was still being moved and stored in what was called “crushed bulk” form. Many of today’s dealers in bulk sulphur are probably too young to recall the fugitive emissions from a windblown pile of crushed bulk sulphur being pushed by a bulldozer or conveyor loaded to railcar or marine bulk carrier, but it was an activity with lots of environmental impact! The era of development of higher quality formed solid sulphur began first with slate or flake, then the various wet forms that led to the granules, pastilles and prills that came to be labelled as the Premium Product that we see more and more on today’s world markets.
But just as the quality of the formed solid sulphur product has risen on the environmental and safety scales, so also have the demands of the global jurisdictions into which the bulk solid sulphur is sold. Fine particulate emissions of sulphur oxidise to acid more quickly, corrode metals more aggressively, threaten lung damage for those who breathe it and tend to burn or explode with a bigger bang. None of the above are deemed acceptable in 21st century commodity businesses. The closer we approach the 100% containment goal, the more the best and most willing buyers demand even better efforts to be really safe and environmentally friendly.
So the message is clear: the solid sulphur industry deserves credit for its work to date but, in this era of ever-increasing competition for a place in the market , the buyers are exercising their long established right to demand the best Quality for the least cost, and achieving that goal is an ever-present challenge for the solid sulphur forming industry.
‘Thiophilos’
Tuesday 5 April 2011
Long hot summer?
The convulsions that have gripped the Middle East and North Africa in recent months are another salutary reminder of the meaning of the phrase ‘political risk’. The removal of president Ben Ali in Tunisia appears to have been fortunately - relatively - bloodless, and in Egypt after an initial heavy-handed crackdown by state police the army appears to have stepped into ensure an orderly transition of power from president Hosni Mubarak. Libya, however, with a ruler far less amenable to outside or indeed domestic pressure, has descended into a de facto civil war, while at time of writing, Bahrain has declared a three-month state of emergency and invited Saudi and other troops from its Gulf Cooperation Council partners onto the streets. Yemen is on the brink, and in Morocco, Oman, Jordan, Kuwait, Iran and Saudi Arabia itself, there have been demonstrations and riots, and things remain tense. The Arabic-speaking world appears to be in for a long, hot summer of discontent as high food prices, unemployment, inequalities of wealth, long-standing political grievances and modern communications technology all combine to create a dangerous cocktail.
As fighting rages around the oil terminals at Brega and Ras Lanuf in Libya, and oil prices climb 25% to $120/barrel, minds are bound to be concentrated on the prospects for production disruptions across the region. Some 60% of the world’s oil and 45% of natural gas resources lie within the region, and the prospect of a revolution spreading to Saudi Arabia must keep many people awake at night. Libya is only the world’s 12th largest oil producer, yet markets are clearly nervous. Even if another major oil producer is not sucked into the swirl of political unrest, the ability of the region to generate an oil shock for the global economy in 2011 comparable with that of 2008 is clearly already present, in a world already in an uncertain emergence from recession.
Fertilizer and sulphur markets have been relatively free from disruption so far, but five of the top ten sulphur exporters and three of the largest consumers lie within the region, the former in the oil and gas-rich Gulf region, and the latter based around the major concentrations of phosphate reserves, in the Maghreb and Jordan. Supplies of phosphate rock and downstream fertilizers from GCT, Tunisia were disrupted for some time after the change in government, as labour disputes at the Sfax, Gabes and La Skhira production sites continued. It was reported that production at the GCT 330,000 t/a DAP plant was continuing at just one-third of normal capacity. There are signs that output is resuming but several weeks’ production has been lost.
In ‘Anna Karenina’, Tolstoy said that; “all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. This seems to be equally true for unhappy nations; the very different experiences of neighbouring Tunisia and Libya are testament enough to that. The events of one country are not necessarily a guide to what will happen in another, as circumstances can be very different even in the closest neighbours. Some countries in the region, for example, have the cushion of oil reserves – in Saudi Arabia King Abdullah has already spent $36 billion of his windfall gains from high oil prices on buying off dissent. But while the bloodshed of the Libyan civil war appears to have given a temporary pause to some of the momentum for change elsewhere, that momentum nevertheless remains. To concentrate solely on the balance sheet is to eclipse the wider significance of a protest movement which many have compared to those that swept Europe and North America in 1968, or central and eastern Europe in 1989. Regional dictators like Mubarak have often held up the spectre of radical Islamism to justify their position to a West that has often been only too happy to indulge them, but there is clearly a secular rather than sectarian mood afoot. Where the pieces of the puzzle will fall remains an open question, but may well end up reshaping an entire region.
As fighting rages around the oil terminals at Brega and Ras Lanuf in Libya, and oil prices climb 25% to $120/barrel, minds are bound to be concentrated on the prospects for production disruptions across the region. Some 60% of the world’s oil and 45% of natural gas resources lie within the region, and the prospect of a revolution spreading to Saudi Arabia must keep many people awake at night. Libya is only the world’s 12th largest oil producer, yet markets are clearly nervous. Even if another major oil producer is not sucked into the swirl of political unrest, the ability of the region to generate an oil shock for the global economy in 2011 comparable with that of 2008 is clearly already present, in a world already in an uncertain emergence from recession.
Fertilizer and sulphur markets have been relatively free from disruption so far, but five of the top ten sulphur exporters and three of the largest consumers lie within the region, the former in the oil and gas-rich Gulf region, and the latter based around the major concentrations of phosphate reserves, in the Maghreb and Jordan. Supplies of phosphate rock and downstream fertilizers from GCT, Tunisia were disrupted for some time after the change in government, as labour disputes at the Sfax, Gabes and La Skhira production sites continued. It was reported that production at the GCT 330,000 t/a DAP plant was continuing at just one-third of normal capacity. There are signs that output is resuming but several weeks’ production has been lost.
In ‘Anna Karenina’, Tolstoy said that; “all happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. This seems to be equally true for unhappy nations; the very different experiences of neighbouring Tunisia and Libya are testament enough to that. The events of one country are not necessarily a guide to what will happen in another, as circumstances can be very different even in the closest neighbours. Some countries in the region, for example, have the cushion of oil reserves – in Saudi Arabia King Abdullah has already spent $36 billion of his windfall gains from high oil prices on buying off dissent. But while the bloodshed of the Libyan civil war appears to have given a temporary pause to some of the momentum for change elsewhere, that momentum nevertheless remains. To concentrate solely on the balance sheet is to eclipse the wider significance of a protest movement which many have compared to those that swept Europe and North America in 1968, or central and eastern Europe in 1989. Regional dictators like Mubarak have often held up the spectre of radical Islamism to justify their position to a West that has often been only too happy to indulge them, but there is clearly a secular rather than sectarian mood afoot. Where the pieces of the puzzle will fall remains an open question, but may well end up reshaping an entire region.
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