FPCC to turn around No 2 cracker on 20-25 Sept

03 September 2007 09:33  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Taiwan’s Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPCC) will shut down its No 2 naphtha cracker for maintenance on 20-25 September after its No 1 cracker is fully repaired and restarted, a company source said on Monday.

The Mailiao-based unit, FPCC’s second largest cracker with an ethylene capacity of 900,000 tonnes/year, was intially scheduled to shut on 3 September for a 45-day turnaround.

However, this schedule had to be delayed when its No 1 700,000 tonne/year cracker, Formosa’s smallest unit, could not restart after a one-week outage. This arrangement was to ensure a balanced inventory in Mailiao for ethylene and propylene, the source said.

The unit, with an estimated propylene capacity of 350,000 tonnes/year and 110,000 tonnes/year of butadiene (BD), was shut on 21 August to fix an ongoing compressor problem, but is now expected to restart on 20-22 September, the source said.

As a result, the producer said that there would be no spot propylene available for October lifting, adding that enquiries from traders also waned last week following the outage at Shanghai Secco Petrochemical.

The outage at the 260,000 tonne/year acrylonitrile (ACN) plant was expected to free up more than 10,000 tonnes of propylene in the domestic Chinese market for October consumption, thus sharply reducing demand for imports.

However, the source added that enquiries were still present for October cargoes headed for southeast Asia.

Spot propylene prices languished at $1,050-1,100/tonne CFR (cost and freight) NE Asia (northeast Asia), according to global chemical market intelligence service ICIS pricing.

By: Gina Myung
+65 6780 4359

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