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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Texas
petrochemical producers continued on March 1 restart efforts at plants shut
during sustained sub-freezing temperatures the week of Feb. 15, with much
attention focused on bringing olefin plants back online to provide critical
feedstocks for derivatives, reported S&P
Global.
"It's going to be a while" before production chains resume
normal output, a market source said, noting that inspections involve a process
of discovery "to determine if everything is okay."
Multiple sources noted
that process has been deliberate given the sheer magnitude of pipes and
equipment exposed to frigid temperatures that rarely hit the region for at least
72 hours straight as they did the week of Feb. 15.
"Many complexes are
interdependent operations, so they have to start up sequentially," a source
noted. If one unit in such a production chain is unable to restart at the same
time, others have to wait.
"It is what it is and you've got to be
patient," the source added.
At its height, the freeze took about 75% of
40 million mt/year of US ethylene capacity offline, with the vast majority along
the Texas Coast. Some has resumed operations, while others remain shut amid
inspections or have faced ups and downs during restart efforts, market sources
said.
As MRC
wrote before, Exxon Mobil Corp has restarted the gasoline-producing and
diesel-producing units at its 369,024 barrel-per-day (bpd) oil refinery in
Beaumont, Texas. Almost all of the refinery’s units have restarted since being
shut by freezing weather on Feb. 15. The 120,000-bpd gasoline-producing fluidic
catalytic cracker (FCC) and 65,000-bpd diesel-producing hydrocracker restarted
on Saturday.
ExxonMobil's operational shutdowns include
polyethylene (PE) facilities amid power outages prompted by the deep freeze that
has enveloped the US Gulf Coast. "This event has caused widespread power outages
across Texas and Louisiana" Feb. 15," the letter, dated Feb. 16, said. "As a
consequence, several ExxonMobil Chemical operations have experienced loss of
power and other key utilities, impacting our ability to resume full operations."
ExxonMobil operates three PE units in Mont Belvieu, Texas, with combined
capacity of 880,000 mt/year, according to S&P Global Platts
Analytics.
Exxon is among many petrochemical producers that shut Feb. 14
and subsequent days because of sustained extreme sub-freezing temperatures in
the region. ExxonMobil previously confirmed Feb. 16 that the company had shut
all refining and chemical operations at its Baytown and Beaumont, Texas,
complexes. Ethylene produced at Baytown feeds the Mont Belvieu PE
operations.
Ethylene is the main feedstock for the production of
PE.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report,
Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,220,640 tonnes in 2020, up by 2%
year on year. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density
polyethylene (HDPE) increased.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government
owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world"s oil
and about 2% of the world's energy. |
