Formosa declares FM on PE, PP after Texas cracker outage

07 December 2009 21:21  [Source: ICIS news]

HOUSTON (ICIS news)--Formosa said on Monday that it had declared force majeure (FM) on polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) because of a cracker outage at its Point Comfort complex in Texas.

“We have isolated the cause of the problem and production is expected to restart in a few days,” said company spokesman Steve Rice.

Formosa has two crackers at the site, one of which had been offline since early last week for planned maintenance.

The other cracker went down late on Friday, the official said.

The two units have combined ethylene capacity of around 1.5m tonnes/year.

Formosa said it was still calculating allocation levels on PP and PE, and that an announcement on supply restrictions was expected shortly.

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By: William Lemos
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