Southeast Asia’s butadiene production is expected to tightened further in the first quarter amid unplanned shutdowns and run cuts in the region, Platts data shows.
The Petrochemical Corp. of Singapore plans to shut one of its two butadiene extraction units on Pulau Merbau at the end of February to conduct repairs lasting about three weeks.
The units have production capacities of 60,000 mt/year and 100,000 mt/year, respectively.
The larger unit was scheduled to undergo a 45-day turnaround in July 2016 along with PCS’ No. 2 naphtha-fed steam cracker.
Southeast Asian production has been curtailed since late November when Shell Chemicals shut its steam cracker at Pulau Bukom. As a result of the shutdown, the oil major declared a force majeure on production from its 186,000 mt/year butadiene extraction unit.
In Indonesia, Chandra Asri has been operating its butadiene extraction unit at Cilegon, Banten province, at 50-60% of capacity, since last week and in line with its sole naphtha-fed steam cracker. The unit can produce 100,000 mt/year of butadiene.
The Cilegon cracker has been running at 50-55% of capacity after its second outage in four weeks occurred on February 5.
The first outage occurred in mid-January and lasted a few days after the cracker was restarted December 19 upon completing a three-month expansion.
