EU exports ethylene to Asia amid Shell Singapore outage

10-Dec-15

A 7,000 mt cargo of ethylene was heard fixed from Terneuzen in the Netherlands for delivery into the east amid the outage late last month at Shell's Singapore cracker, as per a broker in Platts. Shell declared force majeure at the cracker earlier this month, according to sources. A Shell spokesman attributed the shutdown to "maintenance work", but declined to say which parts of the facility were undergoing maintenance and how long it would last. The cracker produces 960,000 tpa of ethylene. Meanwhile, European ethylene supply is turning from tight to balanced with restarts at both Shell's German Wesseling and Dutch Moerdijk crackers. EU spot prices have weakened to Eur 900/mt (US$984/mt) FD NWE on Tuesday from Eur928/mt FD NWE at the beginning of the month. Asian prices were assessed at US$1055/mt CFR Wednesday, unchanged on the day. Participants decided to stay on the sidelines Wednesday amid volatile crude futures as well as uncertainty over the shutdown at Shell's Singapore steam cracker.