MOSCOW (MRC) -- Taiwan’s state-owned oil refiner CPC Corp will cut crude throughput rates in April by less than 10%, from around 70%-80% currently, as the coronavirus pandemic has lowered fuel demand, reported Reuters with reference to two sources familiar with the matter.
CPC, which primarily supplies fuel to the Taiwan market, operates two refineries in Talin and Taoyuan which have a combined capacity of 650,000 barrels per day (bpd).
CPC typically issues monthly tenders to buy Middle East sour crude and sweet crude from West Africa and the United States by the third week of each month.
However, the company has decided not to issue crude tenders in March to seek cargoes for June arrival due to the output reduction, sluggish demand and a sufficient amount of crude in storage, according to the sources.
"Facing the situation of the COVID-19, we are trying to minimize the impact, therefore we decided not issue our crude purchase tender temporarily," CPC spokesman J. Z. Fang said in an emailed response.
"We are still checking how serious the impact is and might reduce our run rate as result," he added.
In February, CPC bought 500,000 barrels of April-loading Upper Zakum crude, 3 million barrels of US West Texas Intermediate Midland crude and 3 million barrels of Angola crude via spot tenders, trade sources said.
As MRC informed earlier, CPC Corporation took one of its naphtha crackers off-stream on 8 November 2019 for major maintenance work. The cracker number 4 remained offline for about 65 days and resumed operation by mid of January 2020. The No. 4 unit has an annual capacity of 380,000 tons/year of ethylene and 193,000 tons/year of propylene. The shutdown resulted in a production loss of 67,671 tons of ethylene and 34,370 tons 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).
CPC Corporation, Taiwan, is engaged in the exploration, production, refining, procurement, transportation, storage, and marketing of oil and gas. The company provides fuel oil, including automotive unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel, low-sulfur fuel oil, marine distillate fuels, marine residual fuels, and aviation fuel; petrochemicals, such as ethylene, propylene, butadiene, benzene, para-xylene, and ortho-xylene; liquefied petroleum gas products comprising liquefied petroleum gas, propane, butane, and a propane/butane mixture; lubricants, motor oil, industrial oil, grease, and marilube oil; SNC products, including petroleum ether, naphtha, toluene, xylene, crude octene, methyl alcohol, normal paraffin, viscosity-graded asphalt cement, and sulfur; and natural gas.
MRC