Asia Viewpoint: by Ma Dongwei

A pump leakage at Maoming Petrochemical under the Sinopec group caused an aromatics tank at an ethylene cracker to catch fire at around 12:45 on Jun 8. The fire is currently under control.

There are 26 spherical tanks of 2,000 cubic meters each and more than a hundred pipelines around the area where the fire occurred. The tanks store mainly ethylene, propylene, C4 and C5 products.

Maoming Petrochemical has two ethylene units of capacity 450,000mt/year and 850,000mt/year, a 150,000mt/year butadiene unit, a 400,000mt/year styrene unit, a 100,000mt/year ethylene glycol unit and a 80,000mt/year synthetic rubber unit.

The accident involved the No.2 ethylene cracker and the 250,000mt/year No.2 low density polyethylene (LDPE) is currently shut down. The restart timing is not decided.

The No.1 ethylene cracker was originally scheduled to restart on Jun 9 but at present, the restart timing is not finalized. The polyethylene facilities involved are the 110,000mt/year LDPE unit and 220,000mt/year all-density unit.

With the shutdown of the ethylene crackers, more LPG is released, causing the South China market to move down.

Owing to large-scale maintenance at many units in 2021, Maoming Petrochemical processed 19.224 mil mt of crude and produced 1.048 mil mt of ethylene. The company made a profit of Yuan 10.066 billion, second among Sinopec refineries and the top earner among enterprises of the same scale.

In the first quarter of 2022, Maoming Petrochemical processed 4.933 mil mt of crude and produced 273,000mt of ethylene.