MOSCOW (MRC) -- Shell is planning to undertake heavy maintenance work this fall at parts of its petrochemical complex at Moerdijk, Netherlands, reported Chemweek with reference to the operator and OPIS sources.
Turnaround work has been scheduled to coincide with maintenance work later this year at Shell’s petchem operations in Germany, a source tells OPIS. Postponed maintenance at the 300,000-metric tons/year steam cracker at Shell’s plant at Wesseling, Germany, will now take place in August and last several weeks, according to IHS Markit’s chemicals division.
A statement on the Shell Moerdijk website confirms that maintenance work at the Netherlands plant has been delayed.
"In consultation with relevant external parties, it has been decided to postpone the major maintenance shutdown of one of our factories planned for May until immediately after the summer," the statement reads. "Shell Moerdijk is an essential link in the ‘Rotterdam-Belgium-Germany’ chain. The postponement of major maintenance along this line led to our decision to postpone the (Moerdijk maintenance) as well. In this way, we ensure that, during these coronavirus times, there are no kinks in vital processes and product deliveries," it says. A spokesman for Shell declined to add further comment.
Shell’s Moerdijk facility is one of Europe’s largest petrochemical plants, with many of its operations integrated with the company’s nearby 404,000-b/d Pernis plant, which is Europe’s largest refinery. Shell began a major turnaround at Pernis last week.
OPIS is an IHS Markit company.
As MRC wrote before, Royal Dutch Shell said it is planning a major maintenance turnaround at its Pernis oil refinery in the Netherlands starting on May 4, 2020.
We also remind that Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island this week following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year of propylene.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,093,260 tonnes in 2019, up by 6% year on year. Shipments of all PE grades increased. PE shipments rose from both domestic producers and foreign suppliers. The estimated PP consumption in the Russian market was 1,260,400 tonnes in January-December 2019, up by 4% year on year. Supply of almost all grades of propylene polymers increased, except for statistical copolymers of propylene (PP random copolymers).
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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