Maintenance shutdown at Formosa’s No 3 naphtha cracker as planned

03-Aug-11

Formosa Petrochemical Corp plans to go ahead as planned, with a 40-45 day maintenance shutdown at its 1.2 mln tpa No. 3 cracker, as per Reuters. This is the largest of its three crackers, and will be shut as planned in mid-August for maintenance, while its refinery remains shut following a weekend fire. The No. 2 cracker is still running and there are no plans to take that offline. The government has requested that we inspect every unit in the Mailiao complex within a year, but there is no mandate we have to shut the No. 2 cracker now. The company shut its 540,000 bpd refinery following a fire on Saturday, prompting it to stop oil product exports. All the refinery units were shut for safety reasons after the fire damaged some of its surrounding infrastructure, including power cables.