Taiwan’s state-owned refining firm CPC Corp has started the process of resuming operations at its 500,000 tonne/year No 5 naphtha cracker in Kaohsiung on 16 April, a company source said on Monday.
The cracker was shut on the morning of 6 April following a pipeline leak that led to an explosion at the site.
After the outage, CPC raised the operating rates at its other two naphtha crackers in Linyuan to 100% of capacity.
The company source said the eventual run rates for the No 2 and No 3 crackers in Linyuan will depend on how the No 5 cracker operates, after it is restarted.
CPC was forced to reduce ethylene and propylene supplies to domestic customers in the wake of the outage, but the source said the producer did not import any ethylene and propylene spot cargoes to make up for the shortfall.