Ethane prices slip in US Gulf Coast on plant outage at Flint Hills Resources and Dupont

26-May-11

Purity ethane prices for May delivery in the US Gulf Coast market fell by nearly 2 cents on Wednesday morning, trading as low as 72.50 cents/gallon on the back of outages at some of the region's petrochemical plants, as per Platts. On Tuesday, a fire forced Flint Hills Resources to shut down its light olefins plant in Port Arthur, Texas, resulting in force majeure on ethylene. The plant is expected to be down for at least a week for repairs. Ethane demand is expected to be less since Flint Hills is down. A power outage also hit Dupont's ethylene plant in Orange, Texas. The plant, which consumes approximately 43,000 bpd of light-end natural gas liquids, is operating. However, it is unclear whether the plant is running at a reduced capacity.