MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shintech's new 500,000 mt/year cracker is expected to start up this month or February after more than a year of delays, reported S&P Global with reference to sources familiar with the company operations.
It will be the eighth new cracker after Formosa's one to come online in the first wave of petrochemical infrastructure to emerge from the US natural gas shale boom that unearthed cheap ethane feedstock.
All told, the eight crackers starting up since 2017 will bring more than 9.7 million mt/year of new ethylene capacity online. A second wave of new cracker capacity under construction or planned beyond 2020 will add at least 8.8 million mt/year of output, though Saudi Aramco's Motiva Enterprises has not disclosed the capacity of a new cracker planned near its 603,000 b/d refinery in Port Arthur, Texas.
As MRC wrote previously, originally, Shintech's cracker was slated to start up in summer 2018, Shintech delayed that milestone to December 2018, then to the first half of last year, and again to December 2018.
The cracker will expand Shintech's in-house feedstock output and reduce ethylene purchases from other producers. Ethylene from the company's new cracker will be sent as feedstock to Shintech's polyvinyl chloride (PVC) production at the same site.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,904,410 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments increased from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,161,830 tonnes in January-November 2019, up by 7% year on year. Deliveries of all grades of propylene polymers increased, with the homopolymer PP segment accounting for the largest increase.
MRC