There are reports of a large number of crackers shutting down in Europe for their annual maintenance in the next three months. This is expected to put a constraint on the supply of key petrochemical products in the next few months, considering that the demand for the same is very good at present and a few other petrochemical companies in Asia have also planned their outages in the same period.
Official sources from a few companies like INEOS, UK, Exxon Mobil, UK, Lukoil, Bulgaria, LyondellBasell, Germany, among a few companies have confirmed to Fibre2fashion that they will be shutting down their capacities in the next 2-3 months.
INEOS Olefins based at Grangemouth, UK, which has an ethylene capacity of 725.000 tons has informed that they will be shutting down their cracker somewhere in the third quarter of 2008 for a period of four weeks.
ExxonMobil also in UK will close their 820,000 tons ethylene cracker in the same period. The other cracker of this petrochemical giant operating in France is also expected to face an outage in the same period
Other European petrochemical majors who have confirmed their intention of a force majeure in the third quarter to Fibre2fashion include the likes of Total/ExxonMobil, Belgium, Lukoil Neftokhim based out of Bulgaria, Dioki in Zagreb, Croatia.
Officials of the 200,000 tons ethylene cracker owned by HIP-Petrohemija in Serbia have also confirmed the closure in the third quarter. The other companies who have verified about the shutdowns in their respective plants for a period of three to four weeks in the fourth quarter of 2008 is the 340,000 tons plant of LyondellBasell in Germany, Unipetrol in Czech Republic and the 660,000 tons ethylene cracker of Repsol in Spain.
Polimeri of Italy which has a 745,000 tons ethylene plant has confirmed that their plant is already under maintenance and is hopeful of restarting it by the middle of August.
Repsol has also confirmed of a planned outage of their acrylonitrile and methyl methacrylite unit in Tarragona, from the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2008 for a period of 40 days.
The planned shutdowns are expected to favour the petrochemical capacities based out of the Middle East and Asia since incase of a shortage, they will be looked up to by the upstream textile manufacturing companies to plug the gaps in supply of their raw material requirements.
Click here to view data of shutdowns
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
-Ltd..jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Thermore (Far East) Ltd.")
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited (TSllC Ltd)")
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Taiwan Textile Federation (TTF)")
