Sinopec-SABIC to start up Tianjin cracker on 15 Jan

07 January 2010 08:41  [Source: ICIS news]

GUANGZHOU (ICIS news)--Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC) and Chinese state-owned Sinopec, plan to start up their new joint venture 1m tonne/year naphtha cracker in Tianjin on 15 January, a company source said on Thursday.

Downstream facilities including polyethylene (PE), ethylene glycol, polypropylene (PP), butadiene, phenol & butene-1, would start up once operations at the cracker are stable, the source said. The cracker had undergone test runs in late December, market sources said.

Market sources added that producers were speeding up production recently in view of rallying PE and PP prices.

The cracker would get naphtha feedstock from Sinopec’s newly-started 10m tonne/year refinery at the same site. The refinery was brought on stream in mid-December last year.

Sinopec and SABIC would each own and sell half of the chemical products from the 50:50 JV, the source said, adding SABIC has a sales arm in Shanghai.

Sinopec would likely target domestic markets and SABIC may move some to other Asian countries and the Middle East, industry sources said.

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By: Fanny Zhang
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