Repsol delays restart of Tarragona cracker

15 February 2011 11:02  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS)--Repsol did not restart its cracker at Tarragona, Spain, on 14 February as previously planned, a company spokesman said on Tuesday.

“[The cracker] is not back in operation yet unfortunately. We expect it will still be a few days but cannot be more precise than that at the moment,” spokesman Kristian Rix said.

The cracker, which has the capacity to produce 660,000 tonnes/year of ethylene and 290,000 tonnes/year of propylene, according to ICIS data, was shut down on 6 February. The cause of the outage was not disclosed.

Repsol's unplanned shutdown at Tarragona marked the third time since the beginning of the year that a cracker in Europe was off line for more than one week.

SABIC’s Olefins 4 cracker in Geleen and Dow Chemical’s No 2 cracker in Terneuzen, both in the Netherlands, were back on stream.

Market players were watching the supply-demand balance very closely amid preparations for the spring maintenance season.

The first turnarounds were scheduled to get underway in the Netherlands at Dow’s No 1 cracker in Terneuzen and SABIC’s Olefins 3 cracker at Geleen in March.

The ethylene contract for February settled at €1,135/tonne  ($1,534/tonne) FD (free delivered) NWE (northwest Europe), while propylene was agreed at €1,105/tonne.

($1 = €0.74)

For more on olefins visit ICIS chemical intelligence
For more on Repsol visit ICIS company intelligence
Click here to find out more on the European margin reports

By: Nel Weddle
+44 20 8652 3214

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