MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petrochemical Corporation of Singapore (PCS) has shut the smaller of two naphtha crackers following an outage, and the unit is expected to stay offline for about 14 days, trade sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, reported The Business Times.
The smaller unit produces 465,000 tonnes of ethylene a year.
The larger unit, which has a capacity of 635,000 tonnes per year (tpy) of ethylene, is operating at maximum capacity.
PCS could not be reached for comments.
A two-week downtime at PCS's smaller cracker would result in a demand loss for naphtha of about two medium-range vessel-size cargoes.
The outage came at a time when India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) had offered a 30,000-tonne naphtha cargo for prompt loading due to a fall in domestic need for the fuel.
As MRC informed before, in early September 2016, PCS took off-stream its No. 2 cracker for an approximately one-week repair work. Located at Pulau Merbau in Singapore, the No. 2 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 635,000 mt/year and propylene production capacity of 350,000 mt/year.
PCS is jointly owned by Japan-Singapore Petrochemicals Company (led by Sumitomo Chemical), Qatar Petroleum International and Shell Petrochemicals (Singapore).
MRC