Chemicals Businesses News

The inland waterway system, flowing through the United States heartland, is a microcosm of all that has been happening in 2020: trade tensions, infrastructure issues, shifting trends in fuel consumption and the pandemic that has gripped us since the winter months. Shortly after the initial coronavirus outbreak here in the U.S., maritime workers were deemed to be “essential”, paving the way for cargo flows to recover from their springtime nadir. As COVID-19 infections turned up on U.S. shores, the boats continued plying the waterways, albeit with reduced volumes in some cases.

Berkshire Hathaway is acquiring Phillips Specialty Products Inc. (PSPI), a flow improver business, from Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX). In exchange for the share capital of the wholly owned subsidiary, Phillips 66 will receive shares of Phillips 66 common stock currently held by Berkshire Hathaway. The specific number of shares will be determined by the share price at deal closing. “The flow improver business is a high-quality business with consistently strong financial performance, and it will fit well within Berkshire Hathaway. I plan to have James L. “I have long been impressed by the strength of the Phillips 66 business portfolio,” commented Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway chief executive officer.

Kerr-McGee Corp.'s chief executive Luke Corbett has been on a spending spree in recent years, building his company's oil and chemicals businesses, but the top executive has yet to catch the attention of Wall Street. "We've essentially transformed our company, particularly over the last two and half or three years," said Corbett, who is also chairman of the Oklahoma City-based energy and chemicals firm. Still, its transformation has attracted little notice from investors, even in spite of several industry analysts haven given Kerr-McGee glowing recommendations. Since hitting a high of about $67 in mid-January, shares of the company have fallen about 20 percent. The drop comes even as the company has posted first-quarter profits that rose more than twenty-fold from a year earlier.

Elf Aquitaine Chairman Philippe Jaffre said he will only enter merger talks with TotalFina if TotalFina agreed to spin off the merged group's chemicals activities into a separate company. Jaffre told France's LC1 television it would be left to Elf and TotalFina shareholders to decide in two months' time between TotalFina's hostile bid for Elf and Elf's counter-bid if the two companies failed to agree on a friendly deal. He said he was "very confident" shareholders would opt for Elf's proposal. TotalFina launched a hostile bid for Elf on July 5 to create the world's fourth largest oil company. Elf responded two weeks later with a counter-bid and said it would spin off the new group's petrochemicals and chemicals businesses into a separately quoted company.

The third quarter proved to be a prosperous one for oil companies, as most of our sampling realized substantial gains in net income and net operating income for the period, as compared to 1998's third quarter. A higher average worldwide crude oil price was chiefly responsible for the increases, although in some cases, cost-cutting measures also contributed heavily to the financial results. Exploration and production net operating income was up, nearly across the board. However, for the first nine months of 1999, earnings and net income are still down from the same period in 1998. Phillips Petroleum Company reported third-quarter net income of $221 million up from $46 million for the same period last year. Total revenues were $3.8 billion, versus $2.9 billion a year ago.