Europe olefins market attention focuses on unconfirmed cracker issues

Focus article by Nel Weddle

LONDON (ICIS)–A handful of unplanned cracker output issues have been heard this week but the impact on the ethylene and propylene markets is so far unclear, with much of the market on holiday, sources said on Friday.

The full impact on the market remains to be seen partly because the exact status of the crackers has not been confirmed, and partly because many key players are absent due to the Ascension Day holidays across much of Europe this week

Total’s NC2 cracker at Antwerp in Belgium is currently offline for planned maintenance, but there are reports that the other cracker operated by Total at that site, known as NC3, is also offline.

“[I] picked up some indirect news that could point at unplanned issues at the Total cracker complex in Antwerp,” a source said. Other sources suggested the same.

Some sources said they thought the unplanned outage started mid-week but that the cracker was likely only down for a few days. Total has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Supply issues at Dow’s Terneuzen, Netherlands site have been circulating for some weeks now. While Dow previously confirmed there were some issues impacting on supply, it declined to comment on the nature of the problems.

However, local Dutch media reports said that a fire and/or leak in a propane pipe on 25 April had impacted feedstock flows to the site, at which Dow owns and operates three crackers.

There was later the suggestion that one of the crackers would be taken offline in May, resuming by the end of June, but this had not been confirmed by the time of writing. Some players in the upstream LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) market said propane prices had fallen partly because the issues had led Dow to resell propane back into the market.

Some market sources were also questioning the status of the INEOS, Total joint venture Naptachimie cracker in Lavera, France this week, following news of a power outage on 2 May. While INEOS said it was unable to comment, a source dismissed the issue as “only a blip, a short outage.”

INEOS also declined to comment on the situation at its Rafnes, Norway cracker which was recently impacted by a total site power outage, but here, sources generally said they thought operations were back to normal.

Meanwhile, LyondellBasell’s cracker at Berre, France, is thought to be in the final stages of restart following planned maintenance. Two weeks ago, some sources had reported it back online, but others said there had been approximately one week’s delay.

While some market participants are fearful that the unplanned production events of 2015 will be repeated, players said that since remaining crackers were running well and at high rates, and there are a range of derivative plant shutdowns, they were doubtful at this stage at least, of European supply being constrained to a similar extent.

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