Units Restart at TotalEnergies Normandy Petrochemical Complex in France — OPIS

TotalEnergies is restarting units at its petrochemical site in Normandy, northern France, according to a post by the French energy major to social media on Thursday.

The notice did not specify which units, but just said that it was "restarting units on the petrochemical site, noise and flaring episodes may occur from this Friday, Feb. 16, 1:00 p.m. Central European Time (GMT + 1), until Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024."

TotalEnergies did not respond to an OPIS request for more information. Market sources first told OPIS on Feb. 6 the 247,000 b/d Gonfreville-l'Orcher refinery resumed operation during the first half of January, delayed from the middle of December last year.

The petrochemical complex located at Gonfreville has experienced a number of technical issues in February to date. A steam cracker was reported by multiple sources as offline at the beginning of February, while issues with orthoxylene tanks at the same site had prevented it from being stored and so halted transport of the product from the complex. The plant is a major supplier of orthoxylene to European buyers.

The issues with the cracker are seen by some participants as being behind a buying spree by TotalEnergies that resulted in it purchasing over 10,000 metric tons of spot styrene over the past week, according to sources.

Market jitters over availability of styrene - also related to the cracker outage - are said to be the main driver for the jump in February spot styrene prices over the past week. Spot styrene has soared week on week by $222.50/mt, rising to $1,505/mt on Feb. 15, according to OPIS data.

The problem with the cracker has occurred simultaneously with a number of outages of U.S styrene units that analysts at Chemical Market Analytics (CMA) by OPIS, a Dow Jones company, estimate has removed around 44% of domestic styrene production capacity from the U.S. market.

The U.S. is a key styrene supplier to Europe and so European buyers traditionally turn to the United States to cover any shortfall in European supply, according to CMA analysts.

TotalEnergies Normandy platform is made up of the 247,000 b/d Gonfreville refinery and a 200,000 b/d petrochemical plant.

This content was created by Oil Price Information Service, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. OPIS is run independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

--Reporting by Yazdi Merchant, ymerchant@opisnet.com; Editing by Rob Sheridan, rsheridan@opisnet.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 16, 2024 13:15 ET (18:15 GMT)

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