Mitsui Chems’ Ichihara Works site shut on power outage after Japan quake

SINGAPORE (ICIS)–Mitsui Chemicals’ Ichihara Works site in Chiba prefecture was shut due to a power outage caused by a 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of eastern Japan on 13 February.

“All production equipment has been safely shut down. There is no physical damage to production equipment due to this earthquake or this shutdown,” it said in a statement in Japanese on Monday.

The company has confirmed the shutdown of its Chiba cracker, which produces 612,000 tonnes/year of ethylene and 330,000 tonnes/year of propylene, as ICIS reported earlier.

The restart process of the facilities at the site is expected to be in sequence and operations will take “10 days to two weeks to recover,” Mitsui Chemicals said.

At Ichihara Works, the company produces olefins, aromatics, polyethylene, polypropylene, phenol, ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, tertiaty butyl alcohol (TBA), elastomers and polyolefin synthetic pulp, according to the company’s website.

“Due to the impact of this earthquake, the manufacturing equipment at the Ichihara Factory is currently shut down, but we will ship it from our inventory to our customers,” the company said.

The strong earthquake that struck off the coast of northeastern Fukushima prefecture on Saturday night has injured more than 100 people and caused widespread power outage.

Additional reporting by Yeow Pei Lin