Ethylene Glycol:Asia

摘要

Despite multiple unplanned steam cracker outages this week, trading activities in the Asian butadiene market remained sluggish. Mitsui Chemicals shut its naphtha-fed steam cracker at Chiba from Thursday due to a mechanical problem. It is unclear how long it will be shut, but sources estimate that the shutdown will be for two weeks. Singapore’s Shell also shut its sole steam cracker Tuesday. Shell’s cracker was restarted Wednesday. The shutdowns did not boost the Asian butadiene market as butadiene plant runs were stable on sufficient C4 feedstock. Some sources said end-users’ demand slowly started picking up this week amid rebounding synthetic rubber prices.