CEPSA declares FM on phenol, acetone in Huelva on technical issues

LONDON (ICIS)–Spain’s Compania Espanola de Petroleos (CEPSA) declared on Monday force majeure (FM) on phenol and acetone at their site in Huelva, Spain, a company source confirmed.

The unit was due to reopen a month ago after a maintenance shutdown, but had some technical issues in the cumene unit and so had to delay restart.

The problems have not been fixed and the unit is now so short of cumene that a FM has been declared and customers put on allocation.

There had been some fears over the last weeks that the extended turnaround could cause shortness in a market described as balanced-to-tight. However low demand means that the impact on availability has been limited to date.

“There is no availability issue. December is not a month when you will notice. If [the CEPSA shutdown] is still current in January, then you will notice,” said one distributor of acetone two weeks ago.

The Huelva site has a total capacity at its two operating units of 470,000 tonne/year of phenol and 290,000 tonne/year of acetone.

The extended maintenance shutdown of six weeks was planned from the beginning of October to mid-November due to the expansion of cumene capacity at the site.