News in brief
15 Jan 2000
Rhone-Poulenc has warned investors that its decision to transform itself from a chemicals to a life sciences company will send it deeply into the red for this year. One-off costs for the transformation, which includes the purchase of 31.7 per cent of drugs subsidiary Rhone-Poulenc Rorer and selling off sections of its chemicals business, will amount to some FFr9.5billion, it said; this could lead to losses as high as FFr6billion.
* Many dead in Indian explosion
A leak of liquefied petroleum gas seems to have been responsible for the explosion at the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation refinery in southern India, which killed 37 people and left another 20 seriously injured. Fires raged for days after the explosion in the port of Visakhapatnam, and 100,000 people were evacuated. The fire destroyed seven of the refinery's 20 storage tanks, and led to the loss of 30million litres of oil.
* Environment Agency criticised
The UK's Environment Agency, which has been operating for 18 months, is not doing its job properly, according to Friends of the Earth. Since its inception, says FoE, there have been 2152 breaches of water pollution limits at 830 plants, yet the agency has only managed 17 successful prosecutions. Moreover, it adds, a fifth of all breaches were in the Midlands, yet no legal action was taken on any of them; while a quarter of prosecutions were in the Thames region, where only 5 per cent of breaches occurred. However, agency chairman Lord de Ramsey claimed that these allegations used `selective and very misleading' information.
* World-scale plant at Seal Sands
BP and BASF are to join forces to build a `world-scale' acetonitrile purification facility at BASF's Seal Sands acrylonitrile plant. To be built by Kvaerner John Brown and operated by BASF, the 9000t/a plant will be owned by BP, and use the British firm's proprietary technology. Acetonitrile is a by-product of acrylonitrile manufacture; the new unit will capture and purify it, so that it can be sold on as a solvent for pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and speciality manufacture.
