Dearth of water supplies in Al-Jubail hits petchem ops - sources

28 May 2009 13:37  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--An acute shortage of clean water supply at Al-Jubail in Saudi Arabia has affected petrochemical plants, causing reduced output and possible shutdowns in the next few days, sources close to local producers said on Thursday.

Details were sketchy as officials from the main producer at Al-Jubail, SABIC, declined comment.

However, the sources said that a unit supplying water for industrial use was suddenly taken offline late on Tuesday due to a technical fault. The restart date was unclear.

“As far as we understood, there is now rationing of water supply there and that had affected petrochemical plants [at Al Jubail] in one way or another,” said one of the sources.

As of 18:00 Singapore time, no producers in the industrial city had reported outages or a reduction in output.

“We’ve not been informed of anything yet, although market rumours have been circulating,” said a source from Mitsubishi Chemical, which owns part of Eastern Petrochemical Co (Sharq), a producer of olefins, polyolefins and mono ethylene glycol (MEG) at Al-Jubail.

“It’s now very unclear, but I think we can expect cuts in supplies for June and even the stoppage of one or two of the plants there,” said a source close to SABIC, adding it was unclear which products would be affected.

A myriad of oil refining and petrochemical facilities are located at the Al-Jubail industrial city.

Refining output totals 360,000 bbl/day, while ethylene capacity is about 8.75m tonnes/year among nine producers. Downstream capacities include MEG, polyethylene, styrene monomer and ethylene dichloride.

The city also houses eight units churning out 7.63m tonnes/year of methanol.

James Dennis contributed to this article
To discuss issues facing the chemical industry go to ICIS connect
Please visit the complete ICIS plants and projects database

By: Salmon Aidan Lee
+65 6780 4359

For the latest chemical news, data and analysis that directly impacts your business sign up for a free trial to ICIS news - the breaking online news service for the global chemical industry.

Get the facts and analysis behind the headlines from our market leading weekly magazine: sign up to a free trial to ICIS Chemical Business.

Printer Friendly