Thailand PTT delays petchem unit shutdown to Dec

SINGAPORE, Sept 29 - Thailand's PTT Chemical PCL <PTTC.BK> has postponed a month-long maintenance at its 461,000 tonnes per year (tpy) ethane cracker by about three months to December, due to a delay in the start-up of a new unit, traders said on Tuesday.

PTT was to start up a new 800,000 tpy ethane cracker in fourth quarter, but this has now been delayed to the first quarter of 2010, traders said.

The reasons behind the delay of the new unit were not immediately clear, but PTT had wanted to shut the existing unit to coincide with the trial runs of the new cracker.

This way, it could reallocate the ethane feedstock originally meant for the 461,000 tpy cracker into the new unit for test runs, said a trader.

"Trial runs on the new unit will likely take place in December, and commercial operations may start from January," a trader said.

PTT, Thailand's top olefins producer, owns three other crackers with a total nameplate capacity of 1.275 million tpy of ethylene. Two of these three units run on naphtha.

Once its new cracker comes onstream in 2010, its nameplate ethylene capacity will be boosted to 2.536 million tpy, but most of the ethylene will be fed into its plastics units.

"Thailand will then need to export more polymers," said the same trader.

The plastics market could face a tumultuous time ahead as Middle East and China are also expected to increase its polymer supplies.

But for now, strong plastics demand in China -- Asia's top petrochemical importer -- is supporting the high cracker runs in Asia, of which most of these crackers are running on naphtha.

Nevertheless, increased naphtha supplies from India and the Middle East has brought the crack spreads, premium/losses obtained from refining Brent crude into the light fuel, to a two-month low at $84.43 a tonne premium on Monday.