MOSCOW (MRC) -- Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp. (FCFC), a subsidiary of Formosa Plastics Group (FPG), experienced an explosion on 7 Apr. 2019 at its aromatics facility in Mailiao Township, Yunlin County, Taiwan, as per Apic-online with reference to several local news reports.
The explosion was caused by a cracked pipeline leaking liquefied petroleum gas. No casualties were reported.
FCFC was fined about USD162,000 by the county government due to the violation of air pollution regulations.
Separately, following the explosion, members of the legislature's Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee insisted that government agencies improve the disaster alert system and set up a national-level petrochemical disaster response center, the Taipei Times reported.
As MRC informed before, in March 2018, Formosa Petrochemical Corp (FPCC) undertook an emergency shutdown at its No. 1 cracker in Mailiao. The company halted operations at the cracker on March 19, 2018 owing to technical issues. The plant remained off-line for around one day. Located at Mailiao in Taiwan, the No. 1 cracker has an ethylene production capacity of 700,000 mt/year, propylene production capacity of 350,000 mt/year and butadiene production capacity of 109,000 mt/year.
Formosa Petrochemical is involved primarily in the business of refining crude oil, selling refined petroleum products and producing and selling olefins (including ethylene, propylene, butadiene and BTX) from its naphtha cracking operations. Formosa Petrochemical is also the largest olefins producer in Taiwan and its olefins products are mostly sold to companies within the Formosa Group. Among the company's chemical products are paraxylene (PX), phenyl ethylene, acetone and pure terephthalic acid (PTA). The company's plastic products include acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) resins, polystyrene (PS), polypropylene (PP) and panlite (PC).
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