MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil is likely to extend a shutdown of its aromatics plant in Singapore after an unexpected outage on December 8, a customer of the company told TPS.
The plant was originally expected to be down for around 7-9 days, according to the source last week.
ExxonMobil cut paraxylene (PX) supply to one customer by 1/3 for December due to the outage, according to the source. The source did not initially anticipate supply disruptions due to this shutdown.
"For January, we have not been told of any supply disruptions so far," the source added.
Exxonmobil did not disclose specific details about why the plant was taken off-stream.
The company states that its aromatics plant in Jurong is able to produce 420,000 mt/year of PX, 330,000 mt/year of benzene, 206,000 mt/year of orthoxylene (OX), and 242,000 mt/year of toluene.
As MRC wrote previously, ExxonMobil is studying a proposal to expand its 334,600-bpd refinery in Beaumont, Texas. ExxonMobil has pulled together a group of experts at the plant to do more detailed studies on potentially adding a third crude distillation unit (CDU). The new CDU could make the Beaumont refinery the largest in the US, with capacity rising to as much as 850,000 bpd.
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.
MRC