(ICIS) -- Spot prices of benzene and xylenes in the domestic Chinese market look set to weaken, as supply will increase once a huge aromatics facility at Huizhou in Guangdong province resumes operations, while demand is still weak, market sources said on Tuesday.
The facility owned and operated by China National Offshore Oil Corp Oil (CNOOC) subsidiary, CNOOC Oil & Petrochemicals, is the country's second biggest aromatics plant. It is expected to come back on stream in the middle of the month after an outage of about four months. The facility can produce 350,000 tonnes/year of benzene, 220,000 tonnes/year of toluene and 900,000 tonnes/year of xylenes, a company source said. The company is also expected to resume operations at its 850,000 tonne/year paraxylene (PX) plant at the site at around the same time.
With more supply coming into the market amid soft demand, spot prices of aromatics products are likely to come off, market sources said.
MRC