A U.S. national security review has delayed the sale of Shell's Deer Park, TX refinery to Mexico's national oil company, Pemex.

Some context:

Shell has been selling off basically all of its refineries—the company told us that it plans to only keep 6 of its most integrated sites (down from 54 sites one decade ago). The site in Singapore that has come up a couple times recently is one of the 6 it intends on keeping.

So, what's the deal here?

Shell's refinery in Deer Park has been a 50/50 joint venture with Pemex since 1993. The enormous site is well integrated with Shell's adjacent petrochemical plant, so for a while it seemed like they would hold onto this site. But then, in May, Shell announced that it had come to an agreement with Pemex to sell its half of the refinery for $600 million (but not the petrochemical plant).

The problem:

CFIUS decided that it needs more time to determine whether Pemex's foreign investment will have an adverse effect on the national security of the United States. One US representative said that "Pemex lacks the technical expertise, safety record, and business practices needed to operate a facility of such scale". Don't expect CFIUS to come to a quick conclusion.

Read more here on Reuters.

Japan's Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) has announced plans to carve out its petroleum and coal based chemical assets by the end of 2023.

A little background:

MCC is probably most well-known in the chemical industry for its methyl methacrylate (MMA) production. The company has about 40% of the global market share for the molecule that becomes polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)—aka acrylic or Plexiglas. In each of the ways the company makes MMA, it uses some petroleum-based molecules (either acetone, isobutylene, or ethylene). Remember when we talked about MCC's plans to build an ethylene-based site in Louisiana?

Okay, so the carve out:

Basically, MCC is putting all of its most emission intensive assets into a pile that it could easily sell off. While it's not clear whether MCC will actually divest these assets, we do know that Japan upped its emission reduction goal of 26% to 46% by 2030 from 2013—so maybe that has something to do with it. We'll have to wait and see what happens "by the end of 2023".

Read the press release here.