MOSCOW (MRC) -- US petrochemical producer Westlake Chemical is expecting to restart its Petro-1 steam cracker in Lake Charles, Louisiana, by mid-July, said Plastemart, citing Platts.
The startup talk is on the tail end of an 80-day planned outage that started on April 19. The turnaround will also include a capacity expansion of 113,000 mtpa. The company operates two steam crackers at the site -- Petro-1, with current ethylene capacity of 567,000 m tpa, and Petro-2, with 886,000 m tpa.
The company is currently under a force majeure declaration at its Calvert City, Kentucky, vinyls complex, stemming from an unplanned outage on June 1 at the 299,000 m tpa steam cracker at the site. The restart of the Kentucky plant was expected in late July, sources added. Westlake will become the fifth US Gulf Coast producer to complete a planned maintenance in the past two months, after four planned turnarounds were completed in Texas. The sole remaining planned and ongoing outage is LyondellBasell's Corpus Christi, Texas, expansion, which is bringing a 363,000 m tpa addition to its 771,000 m tpa ethylene plant.
As MRC informed earlier, Both firms have nominated slates of directors to be voted on at Axiall’s annual meeting on June 17. ut on May 23, officials with Houston-based Westlake said in a news release that Axiall had asked its firm to submit a revised proposal to acquire Atlanta-based Axiall. Axiall officials have asked Westlake to submit a revised proposal or to reaffirm its current proposal by June 3. Westlake officials said in the release they would do so.
Westlake’s 2015 financial results showed sales of USD4.46 billion and profit of USD646 million. The sales total was up 1 percent vs. 2014, while the profit level was down almost 5 percent. Lower selling prices — particularly for polyethylene and ethylene feedstock — impacted Westlake in 2015.
MRC