(ICIS) -- US ethylene spot prices rose this week on potential demand related to scheduled cracker maintenance over the next three months, market sources said on Friday.
Ethylene for July traded as high as 61.50 cents/lb (USD 1.356/tonne, EUR 949/tonne) this week, rising on average by 7% from deals done at 55.50-59.50 cents/lb a week earlier. The product was offered at 63 cents/lb on Friday against a 60 cent/lb bid.
No cracker outages were heard in the US this week, but market sources cited a series of turnarounds coming up over the next few months as the likely reason behind the uptrend.
Among the shutdowns is Formosa's Point Comfort cracker 2 in Texas, which will go down on 1 September for 35-40 days. The unit has 816 KTa of ethylene capacity.