Zhenhai Refining to shut down 650,000 tonne/year Ningbo MEG unit

18 October 2010 12:25  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Sinopec subsidiary Zhenhai Refining & Chemical Co (ZRCC) plans to shut down its 650,000 tonne/year monoethylene glycol (MEG) unit at Ningbo, China, for one week at the end of this month, a source with Sinopec said on Monday.

The shutdown is to take place amid minor maintenance work on Zhenhai Refining’s upstream 1m tonne/year cracker, which is expected to be taken off line at the same time, the source said.

According to a trader, the cracker has recently been running at around 70-80% of capacity due to a mechanical problem.

The company source, however, was not able to provide any information on the cracker.

“We will have to outsource around 10,000 tonnes [of MEG] from the domestic spot market in a bid to guarantee our contract supplies,” said the source.

Such a move would help to support domestic MEG prices, although numbers were weaker on Monday as a result of a drop in crude futures, said the trader.

ICIS assessed Chinese domestic MEG prices on Monday at CNY7,800-7,850/tonne ($1,175-1,182/tonne) ex-tank, down by CNY50/tonne from 15 October.

($1 = CNY6.64)

For more on the MEG visit ICIS chemical intelligence
Read John Richardson and Malini Hariharan’s Asian Chemical Connections blog
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By: Becky Zhang
+65 6780 4359

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