MOSCOW (MRC) -- Total’s Gonfreville refinery near Le Havre, France, started its scheduled maintenance September 4, reported Hellenic Shipping News with reference to the company's statement.
The works will last around two months. The large-scale maintenance, which takes place once every seven years, follows the maintenance at the petrochemical site which took place last year. Preparations for the turnaround have been going on for the last three years.
As MRC informed before, in 2015, Total, Europe’s third-largest oil company, closed its remaining steam cracker in Carling, in the Lorraine region of eastern France. The cracker, which was shut down on 5 Oct., was the second steam cracker closed at the site. The company shut down its first cracker in 2009. Capacities were not available for either cracker. The closure was part of Total's plan to adapt its Carling petrochemical platform with the development of new activities in the growing polymers and hydrocarbon markets.
And in December 2017, Total inaugurated the new units at its Antwerp integrated refining & petrochemicals platform, which had progressively started up in the previous few months. This event marked the completion of the upgrade program launched in 2013 of one of the largest and most efficient integrated refining & petrochemicals platforms in Europe. Thus, the company invested more than EUR1 B to further improve the competitiveness of this major site located in the heart of Europe's main markets.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,255,800 tonnes in the first seven months of 2019, up by 9% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. Meanwhile, the estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 796,120 tonnes in January-July 2019, up by 11% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.
Total S.A. is a French multinational oil and gas company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world with business in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. The company's petrochemical products cover two main groups: base chemicals and the consumer polymers (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene) that are derived from them.
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