JV to turn around Nethelands SM/PO unit in March

07 January 2008 16:40  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--LyondellBasell and Bayer's  joint venture propylene oxide (PO)/styrene monomer (SM) plant at Maasvlakte in the Netherlands is expected to go down for routine maintenance work in mid-March, market sources said on Monday.

 

Work on the unit, which according to ICIS plants & projects has a PO capacity of 285,000 tonnes/year and SM capacity of 640,000 tonnes/year, was due to last approximately six-to-eight weeks, according to one market player.

 

LyondellBasell was unable to confirm this. Information about possible effects on styrene production at the site resulting from the turnaround was not available at present.

 

Sources said the turnaround was likely to have limited impact on the PO market, as the company was expected to build up stocks in advance.

 

One buyer also said that the market was already fairly well supplied.

 

The source said that while it was still early to speculate, it did not foresee any issues for contractual requirements based on current market fundamentals, but noted that it may be more difficult to obtain spot supplies.

 

By contrast, one producer was more reluctant to play down the possible impact of this outage on the market, noting that its own inventories were lower than expected due to recent cracker issues which have since been rectified.

 

By: Heidi Finch
+44 20 8652 3214

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