Formosa Petrochemical Corp from Taiwan is currently evaluating the damage incurred from a fire that occurred last week at its 700,000 ton-per-year (tpy) naphtha cracking unit. Post this, it will decide the unit's closure time length by the coming week.
As of now, the pipes of the plant still have the presence of fire in them. Hence, the firm is not able to evaluate completely the damages, nor are they in a position to assess how long the unit might remain shut. Hopefully by the coming week, executives at Formosa expect to have a clearer picture, informed a company spokesperson.
Traders on the other hand are not expecting Formosa, one of Asia's top naphtha buyers, to purchase any spot parcels in a short span of time. More so, they are of the opinion that, the site might remain shut for two to three months as the base of its distillation tower, cables, wires and also a pyrolysis gasoline unit has been severely damaged.
When operational, the crackers used around 175,000 – 190,000 tons of naphtha per month.
The spokesperson also informed that, the firm was yet undecided about the turnaround at their cracker No. 2, as they were looking forward first to restarting No. 1 cracker.
The 1.03 million tpy cracker, which is currently functional at high rates, was ideally supposed to commence its 30-40 day maintenance around August 20. Formosa also runs a third cracker that has a production capacity of 1.2 million tpy.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India