Taiwan’s CPC will not issue any tenders on isomer-MX and toluene until November following Monday’s declaration of force majeure, a company source said Wednesday.
The pipelines that transport the chemicals produced at its Linyuan facility in southern Taiwan to the terminals and downstream plants run were damaged after a road over which the pipelines run collapsed, and CPC consequently shut its No.6 BTX unit.
“We don’t have much storage capacity located on site,” the source said. “We would have had nowhere to store the aromatics we produced if we had continued aromatics production at normal levels, and there is no way to transport it out due to the shutdown of the pipeline.”
“However, the benzene that we’re producing at the No.3 and No.7 BTX plants, which is used internally by our downstream styrene monomer plant is being transported by road,” the source added.
The mixed xylenes and toluene produced, however, is mostly exported, although there are some domestic buyers.
The No.6 plant has a production capacity of 27,000 mt/year of benzene, 160,000 mt/year of toluene and 193,000 mt/year of isomer-MX.
