Spot ethylene prices have surged in Europe at the end of last week amid production outages across several crackers, which led to force majeure declarations on ethylene supply in some cases ahead of June monomer settlements, according to ChemOrbis. Spot ethylene prices recorded large increases of around €95-100/ton during the past week to exceed the €1200/ton threshold on an FD NWE basis. With these recent gains, spot prices have peaked to the highest level in a year.
Shell has declared force majeure at their 300,000 tpa ethylene Wesseling cracker in Germany following a fire on May 13. Naphtachimie also declared force majeure on ethylene supply from Lavera, France after a fire broke out on May 17. The outage at the 775,000 tpa cracker resulted in force majeure declarations at PP, HDPE and PVC plants located at the same site. Repsol’s Tarragona cracker in Spain is also in an unplanned shutdown due to technical issues. The outage led to a force majeure declaration on ethylene supply at the 700,000 tpa ethylene cracekr. BP Refining & Petrochemicals’ (BPRP) Olefins 3 cracker at Gelsenkirchen, Germany is offline, market sources reported on May 22. The cracker is expected to stay shut a little bit longer than planned after experiencing technical issues during the restart phase.
These production issues have led to firmer expectations regarding the upcoming ethylene contracts, according to ChemOrbis. A few distributors in Italy reported hearing talks of €30-50/ton increases for the awaited June settlements for ethylene.
26-May-15 
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