Cracker outages send USGC ethylene prices back up

摘要

A recent spate of steam cracker outages is slowing the recovery of US Gulf Coast (USGC) ethylene supply from the efects of Winter Storm Uri and driving prices back up. In Louisiana, Shell’s Norco OL-5 unit went down on Wednesday, 7 April, for what is understood to be an estimated 60-day planned turnaround. Nova Chemicals’ cracker in Geismar unexpectedly shutdown on Saturday, 10 April, due to inclement weather. In Texas, both the Formosa OL-1 unit in Point Comfort and the INEOS Chocolate Bayou 2 unit went down for unplanned maintenance on Monday, 12 April.