Typhoon Prapiroon disrupts Maoming Petchem ops

04 August 2006 06:14  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Operations at Maoming Petrochemical, a subsidiary of Chinese petrochemical major Sinopec, were disrupted on Thursday evening when typhoon Prapiroon slammed into southern China, a company source said on Friday.

Strong winds from the typhoon, which landed 70km away from the company’s plants at Maoming, Guangdong province, caused brief power trips and shut down non-vital parts of some units, he added.

“The pellet-making machines at the polyolefins plants were down, but we restarted them quickly. Production was not affected,” he said.

The company also restarted its 100,000 tonnes/year monoethylene glycol (MEG) unit which was shut for five hours after a short-circuit, he added.

The company has a 380,000 tonnes/year cracker, a 175,000 tonnes/year high-density polyethylene/linear low-density PE (hdPE/lldPE) unit, a 100,000 tonnes/year ldPE unit, a 100,000 tonnes/year styrene monomer (SM) unit, a 160,000 tonnes/year PP unit, a 50,000 tonnes/year styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) unit, a 50,000 tonnes/year butadiene unit and 50,000 tonnes/year methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) unit.

Production at another Sinopec subsidiary, Guangzhou Petrochemical, also in Guangdong province, was not affected by the typhoon, a company source said.

The typhoon also swept past Hainan province where Hainan Fudao Chemical, a subsidiary of Chinese major China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), operates ammonia-urea plants.

A Fudao Chemical source said operations were normal at its plant in Dongfang, which can produce 1.41m tonnes/year of urea and 795,000 tonnes/year of ammonia.

By: Florence Tan
+65 6780 4359

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