MOSCOW (MRC) -- South Korea's Samsung Total Petrochemicals Co Ltd has announced that a small quantity of a petrochemical product leaked into the sea from a newly-built paraxylene plant in South Korea, reported Reuters.
The company has cleaned it up.
About 2.4 kilolitres of para di ethyl benzene leaked while flowing to test pipelines of the new plant at the company's Daesan petrochemical complex.
The leak occurred during testing of the new paraxylene plant, and the clean-up has already been completed.
The joint venture between Samsung group and France's Total SA is now looking into the causes of the leak, as per a spokesperson. The new plant has an annual production capacity of 1 million tons of paraxylene and 420,000 tons of benzene.
As MRC wrote previously, Samsung Total Petrochemicals is set to expand oil product sales to the domestic and export markets once it starts production of gasoil and jet fuel from its new Daesan aromatics plant later this year. The new plant will enable the petrochemical firm to produce gasoil for the very first time, from a 150,000 bpd condensate splitter primarily designed to supply feedstock for aromatics production. Capacity at the Samsung Total plant will comprise 1.05 mln mt of gasoil and 1.45 mln mt of jet fuel annually from its new aromatics plant that will start production as early as July this year.
Samsung Total is a 50-50 joint venture between South Korea's Samsung Group and the French chemical group Total.
MRC