INEOS assesses G4 cracker shutdown impact

30 May 2007 12:11 [Source: ICIS news]

INEOS LONDON (ICIS news)--INEOS Olefins was assessing downstream production at its Grangemouth, UK, site on Wednesday after its G4 cracker was shut down for three months of unscheduled maintenance.

The company declared force majeure on supplies of ethylene, propylene and butadiene from the site, while the cracker’s aromatics extraction unit was also forced offline.

High-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) production was still running normally at the complex following the shutdown on Tuesday, but INEOS said it would look at the situation carefully over the next few days.

Its aromatics extraction unit was also undergoing a three-month shutdown.

A company source said INEOS would cover contractual benzene commitments through spot purchases, and no force majeure would be declared on deliveries.

Given the unit’s 295,000 tonne/year benzene capacity, market players estimated that the company would have to buy around 25,000 tonnes of benzene per month over the course of the outage. INEOS could not confirm this amount.

One large European propylene producer said the cracker outage would tighten the market which is already trying to meet very robust demand across the board from derivatives.

However, a propylene buyer said the outage could actually help to keep the market in balance throughout July, but when the turnaround season kicks in in September/August, it could become tight.

INEOS Olefins’ G4 cracker, the smaller of the site’s two crackers, has a 330,000 tonne/year ethylene capacity. The larger 690,000 tonne/year KG cracker was thought to be running as normal.

The site has polyolefin capacities of 325,000 tonnes/year of HDPE, 320,000 tonnes/year of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) and 275,000 tonnes/year of polypropylene (PP).

(Jorn Steffensen, Linda Naylor and Shelley Kerr contributed to this article)

By: Mark Watts
+44 20 8652 3214

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