Iran’s Farsa MEG unlikely to start in July

02 July 2007 08:16  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Iran's Farsa Chemical is not likely to start up its new 400,000 tonne/year monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant at Assaluyeh in July, as earlier scheduled, sources close to the company said on Monday.

 

The new start-up date remained unclear, ranging from September to anytime next year.

 

“The plant was supposed to be started this month, but I think maybe September would be more possible,” said a trader based in Singapore, who was supposed to offtake the MEG and diethylene glycol from the new unit.

 

“Some of their [sales] people came to visit us about two weeks ago, but it seems that they were not confident themselves that the plant would start this year,” said a potential Indian customer of Farsa.

 

Attempts to confirm the start-up delay with Farsa had drawn a blank. National Petrochemical Co (NPC), which initiated the project several years ago only to transfer the plans wholesale to privately-owned Farsa in 2004, was unable to comment on the project’s progress.

 

One Asian trader close to both Farsa and NPC said the main issue impeding the start-up of the MEG plant was “the lack of ethylene, as their crackers could not produce that much ethylene to feed downstream plants for whatever reasons”.

 

It remained unclear how Farsa would resolve its feedstock issue. Farsa was planned as part of Iran’s Olefins No 10 project, but the project’s cracker was not expected to feed the MEG plant in the initial stage, as the MEG unit would start earlier than the cracker.

 

It was also reported in 2004 that the MEG unit would offtake ethylene from Arya Sasol’s new cracker in the country.

 

By: Salmon Aidan Lee
+65 6780 4359

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