Deep-sea SM to boost east China inventory amid weak demand

(ICIS) -- Some 70,000-80,000 tonnes of US styrene monomer (SM) will flow into China through February, raising concerns of a strong inventory build-up as demand for the product is expected to remain weak, industry sources said on Tuesday.

A portion of the expected volume had started flowing into China this month, as loading of shipments from the US Gulf began in October and would continue up to end-December 2010, they said.

In the week ending 17 December, SM inventory in east China stood at 75,000 tonnes, representing a 15.4% increase from two weeks ago, market sources said.

The volume of deep-sea cargoes scheduled for shipment to China in the fourth quarter was about 10,000 tonnes higher compared with the import shipments in the same period in 2009, based on customs data.

The US supply coming into China were priced at between $1,250-1,325/tonne (┬950-1,007/tonne) CFR (cost & freight) China, said a seller.

Meanwhile, buying indications in east China had been limited over the past two weeks, which could prompt traders to just hold on to their SM stocks, the seller added.

MRC

(ICIS) -- Qatar Petroleum and Shell will jointly study the development of a major petrochemicals complex at Ras Laffan in Qatar, Shell said on Tuesday. The project would include a monoethylene glycol (MEG) plant with a capacity of up to 1.5m tonnes/year that would use Shell's proprietary OMEGA technology, Shell added.

Also under consideration were other olefin derivative plants that would yield more than 2m tonnes/year of finished products, Shell said.

Qatar Petroleum and Shell are jointly building the Pearl Gas to Liquids (GTL) and Qatargas 4 LNG facilities at Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar.

MRC

(Bloomberg) -- DuPont Co.'s Sabine River Works chemical plant in Orange, Texas, released more than 20,000 pounds of ethylene when a fire protection circuit tripped, according to a filing to the National Response Center.

The release was in a downstream derivatives unit of the ethylene cracker and the failure did not affect cracker operations, Nathan Pepper, a spokesman for the Wilmington, Delaware-based company, said in a telephone interview.

U.S. refineries must notify the National Response Center if they release hazardous substances in excess of reportable quantities, according to the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, commonly known as Superfund.

The Sabine complex is 110 miles (175 kilometers) east of Houston.

MRC

(Arabian Business) -- Rabigh Refining & Petrochemical Co will start operations at two polyethylene units next week after completing maintenance and cleaning, the company said in a statement on the Saudi bourse website on Sunday.

The company resumed operations at all units with the exception of the two polyethylene units and three ovens in the ethane crackers after an October power outage curbed production at plant, the company said.

It has met 90 percent of its obligations to customers since the power outage.

MRC

(JCN Network) -- Teijin Fibers Ltd will begin full-fledged production and marketing of new plant-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fiber - said to be the world's first commercially produced bio-derived PET fiber - in April 2012.

Also available as a textile, the ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber will become Teijin Fibers' core biomaterial for applications ranging from apparel, car seats and interiors to personal hygiene products. Teijin Fibers expects to sell 30,000 tons of ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber products in the initial fiscal year ending in March 2013, and 70,000 tons by the third year of business.

Teijin Fibers' ECO CIRCLE PlantFiber is made roughly 30 percent from biofuels derived from biomass such as sugarcane.

MRC