MOSCOW (MRC) -- Sadara Chemical Company (Sadara) is planning to resume operations at its naphtha cracker in Jubail, Saudi Arabia in mid-March after unscheduled repairs, according to CommoPlast with reference to market sources.
The company announced an emergency shutdown of its cracker with a capacity of 1.5 million tons/year of ethylene and 400,000 tons/year of propylene im mid-March due to an issue at the compressor.
Besides, the company has also taken the downstream polyethylene (PE) plants offline until the cracker comes back online. The PE plant consists of a 340,000 tons/year of low density polyethylene (LDPE) line and a 600,000 tons/year high density polyethylene (HDPE)/linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) swing line.
As MRC informed before, in late March 2021, Saudi Aramco said it restructured its debt financing for Sadara Chemical Company, its joint venture (JV) with Dow Chemical, an American petrochemical major. The Saudi national oil company also said an agreement had been reached to allocate more natural gas feedstock to the joint venture, which has been building the world’s biggest chemical complex ever delivered in a single phase, in Jubail.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 241,030 tonnes in January 2021 versus 217,890 tonnes a year earlier. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
MRC