Outage at Shuaiba refinery to delay naphtha exports by 4-5 days

07-Jan-10

An outage at Kuwait Petroleum Corp’s (KPC) 200,000 bpd Shuaiba refinery had disrupted production in the last week of December 2009. KPC has limited production to barely 70% capacity after restart this week, leading to a possible delay in some naphtha exports to Asian customers by 4-5 days. The delay has coincided with tight prompt supplies amid robust demand. Also compounding the supply situation is a delay in arrival of about 200,000 tons of Western naphtha due to Europes’ cold winter.