MOSCOW (MRC) -- PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC) has abruptly shut down three crackers at its petrochemical complex in Map Ta Phut on 14 April 2021 after a thunderstorm caused a power outage, reported CommoPlast with reference to a source close to the company.
The source said No. 1 and 4 crackers and the recently launched No. 5 cracker on the site are now offline and it might take a week to restart these units.
The production capacities of No. 1 and 4 crackers are 461,000 and 515,000 mt/year of ethylene, whereas the new cracker can produce 500,000 mt/year of ethylene and 260,000 mt/year of propylene.
It is likely that downstream PE and PP productions would also be affected by the incident, however, the company has yet to release any details.
As MRC reported earlier, PTTGC started trial runs at the new cracker in Thailand on February 9-10, 2021, it received commercial ethylene at this facility on March 5, 2021.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 356,370 tonnes in the first two month of 2021, down by 9% year on year. Shipments of exclusively low density polyethylene (LDPE) increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market was 246,870 tonnes in January-February 2021, up by 30% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
PTT Global Chemical is a leading player in the petrochemical industry and owns several petrochemical facilities with a combined capacity of 8.45 million tonnes a year.
MRC