Singapore (Platts)--28Jul2010/352 am EDT/752 GMT

Taiwan's privately owned refiner Formosa Petrochemical Corp. is in talks with its gasoline term lifters to defer or cancel prompt export cargoes, following the unplanned shutdown of its fire-struck Mailiao refinery, industry sources said Wednesday. So far, there is nothing firm on new schedules. But it is understood that an end-July loading cargo and all of Formosa's August loading cargoes -- estimated at five to six 250,000-barrel parcels -- will be affected. In the event that Formosa has to defer cargoes, it will be delaying some of its August cargoes into September. The refiner had earlier deferred its end-July and August loading gasoline cargoes by five to seven days due to an 11-day unplanned outage of its 84,000 b/d No. 1 residue fluid catalytic cracker over July 12-22 at the 540,000 b/d Mailiao refinery. Formosa is now preparing for the restart of the refinery and expects to to bring the plant online by the end of this week. The entire refinery was shut on safety concerns after a fire broke out at its 80,500 b/d No. 2 residue desulfurizer Sunday evening. Still, runs at both the refinery's RFCCs -- each with a capacity of 84,000 b/d -- may not be able to reach 100%, as this will depend on the availability of sweet crude needed to produce low sulfur residue as feedstock for the RFCCs, given that the No. 2 RDS will be shut for several months of repairs. Based on the residue feedstock at hand, the refiner expects to run the RFCCs at a minimal throughput rate of 56,000 b/d for each unit, or about 67% of capacity, a senior company official told Platts earlier Wednesday. --Irene Tang, irene_tang@platts.com Similar stories appear in Platts Asian Petrochemical Scan. See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products.aspx?xmlFile=asianpetrochemicalscan.xml