DATE : 2014-07-17
SABIC Europe’s butadiene (BD) producing units at Wilton in the UK and in Geleen in the Netherlands are back online, a company source confirmed on Thursday.
“The units are running,” the source said.
Both of the units had been shut down for planned maintenance.
The UK unit, which has the capacity to produce 100,000 tonnes a year of BD, was shut for maintenance in early May alongside that of SABIC’s nearby cracker. However, technical difficulties meant that the cracker ws only restarted successfully at the end of last week – it had been expected to restart around 22 June.
The 130.000 tonnes/year BD unit in the Netherlands was taken down in early June but maintenance was prolonged by about two weeks because of “unforeseen issues". Some overlap in the units’ downtime was intended.
The extended outages of the two units have had limited impact on the European market in general, save for creating some small shortfall cover interest from domestic consumers.
SOURCE Icis News