DATE : 2015-03-24
Styrolution’s Texas City, Texas, styrene monomer plant is running at full rates this week more than four months after an unplanned outage late last year, a source close to the company said on Tuesday.
The 450,000 tonne/year unit was shut down on 18 December after a heat-exchanger failure, the source said. While not delineating reasons for the extended down time, the source said repairs were complicated by the location of the heat exchanger.
The last time the unit was off line was for about a week of planned maintenance in August 2014.
Sources said they expected the restart to have little immediate effect on spot pricing, which was in a range of 54.50-55.25 cents/lb ($1,202-1,218/tonne) FOB (free on board) based on recent deals.
The startup should add some liquidity to the market, a source said, but it did not expect any significant pricing effect, especially given talk of other producers’ planned maintenance in April and May.
In the meantime, demand for styrene exports has kept supply snug in the US, and some suggested mostly soft crude-oil values kept players to the sidelines in the past week.
US sources said domestic derivative polystyrene (PS) demand has not yet picked up from middling levels domestically, but contract values were being talked flat to potentially higher for March.
Other major US styrene producers include Americans Styrenics, Shell Canada, Westlake and LyondellBasell.
SOURCE Icis News