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MOSCOW (MRC) -- The US Energy
Department said that the West Hackberry site of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve
“sustained considerable damage” from Hurricane Laura and that detailed estimates
of the harm done should be out later this week, reported Reuters.
The department shut two of the
four SPR sites ahead of Laura and the other site, in Big Hill, Texas is back up
and fully operational, it said. The West Hackberry is without access to
commercial power. “There is no threat to the integrity of the geologically
sealed underground caverns, and no danger of contamination or concern for
spills,” a department official said.
As MRC wrote previously,
most chemical production facilities in the region between Beaumont-Port Arthur,
Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, have shut down in preparation for Hurricane
Laura, which was forecast to make landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border last
Wednesday night or early Thursday. Several olefin crackers and associated
derivative polymer units have been shut down, as has about 2.5 million b/d of
refining capacity.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing
polyethylene (PE) and PP.
According to MRC's DataScope report,
PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000
tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in
imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months
of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer
(homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports. |
