MOSCOW (MRC) -- A brief loss of power forced Royal Dutch Shell Plc to shut the coker at its 225,300 barrel-per-day (bpd) Norco, Louisiana, refinery, said sources familiar with plant operations, said Reuters.
Shell is working to restart the 25,000-bpd coker, which was shut shortly after 1 a.m. CDT (0600 GMT) on Thursday.
Shell spokesman Ray Fisher said units in the refinery and Shell’s adjoining chemical plant were affected by the power loss. He declined to say which units were affected at the Norco complex.
The coker converts residual crude oil from distillation units into feedstock for motor fuels or petroleum coke, a coal substitute.
An olefins unit in the chemical plant was also affected by the power loss, according to the sources.
As MRC informed earlier, Shell Singapore restarted its naphtha cracker in Bukom Island in early December 2019, following a two months maintenance shutdown since the beginning of October 2019. Thus, this cracker was taken off-stream for the turnaround on 1 October 2019. The cracker is able to produce 960,000 tons/year of ethylene and 550,000 tons/year 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 215,390 tonnes in the first month of 2020, up by 23% year on year. Shipments of all grades of high density polyethylene (HDPE) and linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) increased due to higher capacity utilisation at ZapSibNeftekhim. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 127,240 tonnes in January 2020, up by 33% year on year. ZapSibNeftekhim's homopolymer PP accounted for the main increase in shipments.
Royal Dutch Shell plc is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the biggest company in the world in terms of revenue and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors". Shell is vertically integrated and is active in every area of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and production, refining, distribution and marketing, petrochemicals, power generation and trading.
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