Shell Chemicals has declared a force majeure on butadiene out of its Norco, Louisiana, petrochemicals facility following an outage, sources said Friday.
The butadiene extraction unit went down unplanned in late May and was expected to be down for several weeks, possibly into early July, sources said.
Shell Chemicals spokesman Ray Fisher, in an email, said maintenance has started to “a unit on the chemicals side” of its Norco complex, but declined comment about whether the unit went down unplanned and whether a force majeure was issued. “For reasons of commercial confidentiality, we do not provide details about the operational status of individual units or information on supply,” he said.
Norco has an estimated production capacity of 585 million lbs/year of butadiene.
US spot butadiene Friday was talked at 40-43 cents/lb ($882-$948/mt) CIF US Gulf Coast and was last assessed, on May 24, at 40 cents/lb ($882/mt).
