DATE : 2008-06-10

 

The steam cracker and butadiene (BD) extraction units at Shell’s Moerdijk, Netherlands site are running according to plan following the explosion at its joint venture styrene monomer (SM)/propylene oxide (PO) plant (MSPO-2) last week, a Shell  spokesman said on Tuesday.

This appears to be being substantiated from the upstream market with an upstream market source commenting that the impact on naphtha was “very small, compared to their position,” as Shell had been seen backing out just one naphtha feedstock cargo.

“It’s nearly negligible,” the upstream source said.

Some impact on the propylene market in Europe is still anticipated, with the supply and demand balance widely expected to lengthen as a result of the MSPO-2 unit outage, although it was said to be on a maintenance turnaround at the time of the incident.

Given the extent of the damage at the site, some styrene players earlier estimated that the unit be could offline for a minimum of three months.

Shell's Moerdijk cracker has the capacity to produce 900,000 tonnes/year of ethylene and 500,000 tonnes/year of propylene, and the the BD extraction unit 115,000 tonnes/year of BD according to the company's website.

 

SOURCE Icis News