Two fatty alcohols plants in west Malaysia shut since 1 April – sources

SINGAPORE (ICIS)–Two fatty alcohol plants in Selangor in the western coast of Malaysia are shut for nearly a month due to disruption of gas supply caused by a pipeline fire in the area on 1 April, market sources said on Friday.

Edenor Technology’s 80,000 tonne/year fatty alcohol plant and KLK OLEO’s 300,000 tonne/year plant suffered unplanned outages because of the incident, they said.

According to gas distributor Gas Malaysia Energy Services (GMES), gas supplies to a total of 192 plants in Selangor were cut off after a blaze raged at PETRONAS Gas Bhd’s (PGB) main pipeline near Putra Heights for more than seven hours on 1 April,

Edenor Technology, in a letter to its clients dated 22 April obtained by ICIS, said that the push-back of gas supply restoration in Selangor “has further affected our production facility in Telok Panglima Garang … and it will lead to further delays in some of our upcoming deliveries”.

Edenor stated that gas distributor GMES indicated that full restoration of natural gas supply will be delayed to 1 July from an earlier estimate of 20 April.

Meanwhile, KLK OLEO, the oleochemicals manufacturing division of Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad (KLK), has yet to respond to ICIS’ queries on the issue at the time of writing.