Houston — Petrochemical producer Sasol's ethane cracker in Lake Charles, Louisiana, will restart from planned maintenance work in the latter part of December, a spokeswoman for the company said in an email to S&P Global Platts.
"On November 30, we shut down the LCCP ethane cracker to begin replacing its acetylene reactor catalysts, as we announced in October," the spokeswoman said.
The unit is expected to have a nameplate capacity of 1.5 million mt/year in 2020, according to the company's website.
The maintenance began November 30.
Despite ongoing maintenance at Sasol and Motiva Chemical's Port Arthur, Texas, cracker, spot ethylene prices fell almost 17% from Tuesday to Thursday, according to S&P Global Platts data. Platts assessed spot ethylene at 19.125 cents/lb FD USG Thursday.
Trade sources have attributed the decline in pricing to downstream polyethylene oversupply.
-- Astrid Torres, astrid.torres@spglobal.com
-- Edited by Bill Montgomery, newsdesk@spglobal.com