Shell restarts 800,000 tpa ethylene cracker in Bukom Island after two months

24-May-11

Shell has restarted its 800,000 tpa ethylene cracker in Bukom Island, Singapore, over the weekend as per Platts. The cracker has been shut for about two months following an outage. The unit was taken offline for a planned month long maintenance in February this year. Shortly after it restarted, it had to be shut on March 18 due to technical problems, prompting it to declare force majeure on some chemical supplies. It was not clear at what rate the plant was operating. The cracker is designed to use a range of raw materials including naphtha, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and heavy liquid hydrocarbons such as hydrowax.