US spot ethylene settled at a 12-week high in the middle of last week, to be assessed at 56.5-57 cents/lb FD USG, up 3 cents/lb week on week, as a delay in the startup of a major transmission line between Texas and Louisiana, tightening supply amid a busy turnaround season and a suspected unplanned production outage pushed spot markets to levels not seen since late January, as per Platts. Thursday's assessment was the highest since January 30, when it stood at 56.75-57.25 cents/lb FD USG.
Chevron Petrochemical Pipeline's Evangeline transmission system, the largest of three lines supplying facilities in Louisiana with ethylene from Texas-based producers, has had its restart pushed back to mid-May from early May from a shutdown that began in August 2013, sources said. "You must have ownership of the ethylene at Mont Belvieu [Texas-based storage and trading hub] in April in order to move it across to Louisiana in May," one trading source said. "That is one of the reasons for the spike seen recently in spot prices," the source added. In addition, possible production disruptions Wednesday at Dow Chemical's petrochemical complex in Freeport, Texas, were heard pushing spot markets higher, multiple market sources said, as Dow's olefins production in Freeport includes two steam crackers with an estimated 1.68 million tpa of ethylene, according to Platts data. The purported production issues come amid two planned turnarounds in Texas by olefins producers ExxonMobil Chemical and LyondellBasell that began in late March, which are adding to the tight supply situation.
Neither Dow nor Chevron officials were available for comment on the operational issues.
28-Apr-14 
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