Weather and equipment related unplanned shutdowns have resulted in major ethylene producers in North American to curtail production. Dow, CP Chem and Nova have been off-line in the past few days leading to loss of production. These unplanned outages, leading to loss of production capacity, is viewed by many as positive for the industry. With the softening of demand, the outages could help bring supply and demand back in balance.
· Dow Chemical's Freeport facility in Texas is considered to have faced a severe equipment failure that compelled it to bring the plant off-line. This facility, that supplies approximately 2% of the North American ethylene, is expected to be shut for 3-5 weeks until damages on the plant are repaired.
· CP Chem has also shutdown the Sweeny 22 unit in Sweeny Texas considering a cracked gas compressor. Dates for restart have not been disclosed as yet.
· Six natural gas processing units of NOVA Chemicals providing feedstock to NOVA for ethylene, polyethylene, and co-product production at the Joffre facility in Alberta, Canada have also been off-line since June 21 this year. This is a result of a storm that is contemplated to have caused havoc at the site. Operating at about 40% capacity, these units are not expected to return to full production until Q3 of this year.
Markets are also expected to tighten as planned maintenance in October removes about 7% of North American ethylene capacity and 13% of Chinese capacity
19-Jul-05 
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