Taiwan's Formosa restarts No 1 cracker, 180,000 bbl/day CDU

19 October 2010 11:49  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS)--Taiwan’s Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPCC) has restarted its 700,000 tonne/year No 1 cracker in Mailiao on Friday, along with one of the crude distillation unit (CDU) at its 540,000 bbl/day refinery at the site, company sources said on Tuesday.

The No 1 cracker, which was shut due to a fire incident on 7 July, is currently running at 70-80% of capacity, said one source. 

Formosa spokesperson Lin Keh-yen had declined to comment on the status of the cracker on Tuesday but confirmed the restart of the CDU, which was shut on 25 July by another fire incident at the company's Mailiao complex.

Yen had said earlier on that the company was waiting for a government permit to restart the cracker.

FPCC’s other cracker at the site, with 1.03 m tonne/year capacity, is currently shut for maintenance. The shutdown of this cracker was delayed to 5 October from August due to the unexpected and prolonged outage at the No 1 cracker.

The company also runs a 1.2 m tonne/year No 3 naphtha cracker in Mailiao. 

With additional reporting by Helen Yan and Felicia Loo

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By: Nurluqman Suratman

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