MOSCOW (MRC) -- CPC Corporation has taken one of its naphtha crackers off-stream on 8 November 2019 for major maintenance work, reported CommoPlast with reference to market sources.
The cracker number 4 is expected to remain offline for about 65 days and would resume operation by mid of January 2020.
The No. 4 unit has an annual capacity of 380,000 tons/year of ethylene and 193,000 tons/year of propylene. The shutdown would result in a production loss of 67,671 tons of ethylene and 34,370 tons of propylene.
Sources added that for December 2019 contract, CPC would fulfill only 85% of the volume due to the shutdown.
As MRC informed earllier, CPC Corporation took its No. 4 cracker off-line in mid-November 2017 owing to technical issues and resumed its operations in late January, 2018. Located in Linyuan, Taiwan, the cracker has an ethylene capacity of 380,000 mt/year and propylene capacity of 193,000 mt/year.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polyprolypele (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,589,580 tonnes in the first nine months of 2019, up by 7% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 976,790 tonnes in January-September 2019, up by 4% year on year. Shipments of PP block copolymer and homopolymer PP increased.
CPC Corporation, Taiwan, is engaged in the exploration, production, refining, procurement, transportation, storage, and marketing of oil and gas. The company provides fuel oil, including automotive unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel, low-sulfur fuel oil, marine distillate fuels, marine residual fuels, and aviation fuel; petrochemicals, such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, para-xylene, and ortho-xylene; liquefied petroleum gas products comprising liquefied petroleum gas, propane, butane, and a propane/butane mixture; lubricants, motor oil, industrial oil, grease, and marilube oil; SNC products, including petroleum ether, naphtha, toluene, xylene, crude octene, methyl alcohol, normal paraffin, viscosity-graded asphalt cement, and sulfur; and natural gas.
MRC