Olefins supply to tighten in Asia on two major cracker turnarounds in March-April

14-Dec-11

Planned cracker turnarounds at Honam's Yeosu cracker and Yeochun NCC’s No. 2 cracker will coincide with each other. As a result, Asia's olefins and butadiene supplies are expected to tighten over March-April 2012, as per Platts. Total of 1.57 mln tpa of ethylene, 845,000 tpa of ethylene, and 350,000 tpa of butadiene will be taken offline. Honam Petrochemical Corp. plans to shut its naphtha-fed steam cracker at Yeosu from March 1 to April 15 for a 45 day maintenance program. The cracker has a design capacity of 720,000 tpa of ethylene and 360,000 tpa of propylene, and supplies crude C-4 feedstock to a 130,000 tpa butadiene plant. Concurrently, Yeochun NCC also plans to take its No. 2 naphtha-fed steam cracker at Yeosu offline on March 20 until April 19 with estimated capacity of 857,000 tpa of ethylene and 485,000 tpa of propylene, will be shut for an estimated 30 days. The No. 2 cracker supplies feedstock to a 220,000 tpa butadiene plant at Yeosu, which is also owned by YNCC.