Thai PTT’s new unit delayed, month long ethane cracker maintenance defered

30-Sep-09

The start up of Thai PTT Chemical Co’s new 800,000 tpa ethane cracker has been delayed from Q4-09 to Q1-10. The shutdown of the existing unit was planned to coincide with the trial runs of the new cracker so as to be able to allocate the ethane feedstock from the old cracker towards the new one. This has therefore, pushed back PTT Chemical’s month-long maintenance at its 461,000 tpa ethane cracker by about three months to December. PTT is Thaialnd’s number one lefins producer, owns three other crackers with a total nameplate capacity of 1.275 mln tpa of ethylene that will be boosted to 2.536 mln tps from a new unit. Two of these three units run on naphtha.