MOSCOW (MRC) -- Chevron Phillips Chemical declared force majeure Sept. 1 on its polyethylene (PE) products after assessing the impact of Hurricane Laura to its Gulf Coast PE operations, the company said in a letter seen by S&P Global.
"Unfortunately, it has become apparent that issues arising in connection with the hurricane and the associated outages have impacted our planned production and delivery of polyethylene products," CP Chem stated.
CP Chem operates a 420,000 mt/year high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plant in Orange, Texas, and an 855,000 mt/year cracker in Port Arthur.
The company plans to minimize the impact of the event and return to full PE deliveries as soon as possible, the letter said.
Although there was no exact recovery timeline, the letter stated that it's working to evaluate the duration of the interruption.
The letter follows a group of force majeure declarations by other petrochemical producers this week, including Westlake Polymers, Ineos Olefins & Polymers and Sasol, which are all recovering from widespread power outages and damage from Laura, which made landfall on Aug. 27.
As MRC informed earlier, on 18 August, 2020, Chevron Corp reported a fire at its 112,229-barrel-per-day (bpd) Pasadena, Texas facility. "At this time, flames, smoke may be noticeable to the community. We are coordinating with local officials, and working to resolve the issue as soon as possible," the company reported on August, 19.
We remind that US-based Phillips 66 remains open to developing another ethane cracker for its Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) joint venture, the refiner's CEO said in March 2018.
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.
Headquartered in San Ramon, California, Chevron Corporation is the the second-largest integrated energy company in the United States and among the largest corporations in the world. Chevron is involved in upstream activities including exploration and production, downstream activities including refining, marketing and transportation, and advanced energy technology. Chevron is also invested in power generation and gasification processes.
MRC