Toluene firm; SKorea supplies up on plant restart

28 July 2006 08:10  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Toluene prices remained firm on Friday as bullish sentiment prevailed in the market, due in part to US crude and gasoline prices, market sources said.

Prices rose on Thursday by $25/tonne from last Friday’s closing prices and hit $960-970/tonne FOB Korea, where they continued to trade on Friday, on the back of high gasoline and crude values in the US.

Meanwhile toluene supplies from South Korea into regional markets have grown this month following several plant restarts.

The two major BTX South Korean producers, SK Corporation and its subsidiary SK Incheon Oil Co. Ltd, restarted production in July after turnarounds, said a trading source.

SK Corp, South Korea’s largest refiner and a petrochemical major, restarted its BTX plant around the middle of July, a company representative said on Thursday. The plant was shut for a turnaround in the first week of June.

SK Incheon Oil, which was taken over by SK Corp earlier this year, restarted its BTX plant early July after a 35-day turnaround, said a company source on Friday.

The total capacity of SK Corp’s plants, including the new reformer started in Ulsan from May, is 520,000 tonne/year of benzene, 820,000 tonne/year of toluene, and 1.4 million tonne/year of mixed xylenes (MX).

From the total volume of MX produced, 300,000 tonne/year is sold into the market while 1.1 million tonne/year is used as feedstock for its paraxylene (PX) and orthoxylene (OX) units.

SK Incheon’s BTX plant produces 100,000 tonne/year of benzene, 200,000 tonne/year of toluene and 400,000 tonne/year of MX.

Large quantities of the material produced by the group are exported into regional markets. It was heard that supplies into the Chinese domestic market have increased since these two plants restarted, although Chinese traders mentioned that the demand for toluene is weak.

By: Mahua Chakravarty
+65 6780 4359

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