Marun raises cracker operating rates to 75%

15 August 2007 07:48  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--Iran’s Marun Petrochemical has ramped up operating rates at its 1.1m tonne/year cracker to 75% , a source close to the company said on Wednesday.

 

Capacity utilisation at the cracker’s downstream units, consisting of a 300,000 tonne/year high density polyethylene (HDPE) unit and  400,000 tonne/year monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant, had also been raised, the source said.

 

“The HDPE unit is running at 80-85% and the MEG plant at 75%,” he said. The cracker as well as derivative units, located in Bandar Imam, were operating at 60-65% capacity in July.

 

About 150,000 tonnes/year of ethylene from the cracker would be available currently for export to Europe and Asia, the source said. However, the HDPE and MEG output would be consumed within Iran, he added. 

 

Export availability of ethylene would be raised to 200,000 tonnes/year after the cracker reaches full production levels, the source said. This was likely to take two more months, after the installation of a new boiler.

 

Marun's cracker failed to start up in April last year due to a lack of steam. A design fault had caused an imbalance at the cracker, a second source close to the company said.

 

The company restarted the derivative units in late December using ethylene from other National Petrochemical Co (NPC) subsidiaries. 

ICIS Copyright © Reed Business Information 2009

Author: Prema Viswanathan
+65 6780 4359

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